titan_uranus

Rams, Titans, Bucs. Meanwhile the Jets play the Chiefs this week...watch out. How many wins do we think it will take to win the NFC East this year?

I saw the arguments both for and against signing him up for another year. I have no issues with us doing it and I hope Jones is as motivated as he's ever been to push himself, improve his deficiencies, lock himself into the 22 as early in 2021 as possible, and prove many of us wrong. The test will come if he gets early games but struggles, making it harder and harder for us not to let him get to 300. But I'm happy to back him in to get it done.

Is this actually confirmed anywhere? According to this article he's looking at "Melbourne-based rivals". Can't find anything which says he's nominated St Kilda?

St Kilda weren't a "destination club" until players showed up there last year. We've attracted Langdon, Tomlinson, May and Lever in the last three off-seasons with, potentially, some more players to come this year. I don't buy your argument.

That's a ridiculous way to analyse player capability. Brayshaw came 3rd in the Brownlow once, I suppose that makes him better than Treloar?

I love that page. It tells me we once had someone wear number 59, which I never knew.

This is an incredibly hurtful position to take. People deal with loss in different ways. People grieve in different ways. If you managed to move on from your father's death and get to a point where your career is going well, hats off to you. But the fact you were capable of that doesn't mean everyone else should be as well. A "just get over it" attitude like this is not helpful.

I agree with your assessment of Treloar but the price is huge and I'm not sure we can afford it. I think we need to spend what money we have retaining our current A-graders and improving other areas of the ground. The unknown I suppose is how badly Collingwood want his salary off their books. They're not short of cash. If they're utterly desperate, maybe they'll agree to pay a significant portion of his salary. I doubt it though, as I suspect there's another club out there that is prepared to put down significant cap space for Treloar (Carlton, if they hadn't already committed to Saad/Williams, would be one, surely).

They signed him up to a 4-year extension in July last year, at a time when he was already contracted through to the end of 2021. Neither the hamstrings nor the poor kicking are new developments, both were well-known in July 2019. Whether it's bad salary cap management (no excuse for that either, it's not like in July 2019 they didn't know that Moore, De Goey, Mihocek, Cox etc. were all out of contract this year) or something else, this is a remarkable situation for the Pies to be in. As I've said before, I highly rate Treloar, his dodgy kicking notwithstanding. He'll find a home if he ultimately has to leave, even with the money he's owed under his current contract.

He's not a defender. IMO, he's also not a forward. He's just, IMO, not a footballer. I think he's significantly overrated on here and by the FD. But he'll be here next year so hopefully he can change my mind.

If Higgins is available this year we should be interested IMO. I think he's a pretty good small forward. As to Billings, I do not rate him as highly as others, and certainly not highly enough to trade Brayshaw for.

This has GNF riddles written all over it. Looking forward to seeing what the next few weeks brings.

I did pump up Geelong's tyres earlier, but the clear knock on them under Scott strengthened last night. In the 2017-2020 period, Geelong has played 11 finals for a 4-7 record. Richmond, in the same period, has played 12 finals for a 10-2 record (and three flags, obviously). In each of Richmond's premiership winning seasons, they've beaten Geelong (2017 QF, 2019 PF, 2020 GF). Things could have looked so different to the Richmond "dynasty" and Geelong's Dangerwood era if even one of those three Richmond-Geelong finals went the other way.

To be fair, whilst I don't agree with @DeeSpencer's overall view, the argument against taking Brown is clear and deserves consideration. It will either see us go into 2021 with Brown, Weideman and Jackson in our forward line, or with one of Weideman and Jackson not playing. If the former, can that forward line work? It's taller than both Geelong's and Richmond's (for example), and with the added risk that Brown, Weideman and Fritsch aren't good with pressure. If the latter, is that beneficial to our overall development? What's the point in taking Brown if we then can't/don't play Weideman? Or worse, it stifles Jackson's development? IMO, it will result in the former: we'll play Brown as the stay-at-home forward with Weideman and Jackson roaming further up. Jackson's agility mean he's not a true tall anyway, and I think Weideman will be better when he's released from the pressure of being our only tall marking option. The impetus on the FD is to ensure that Brown, Weideman and Fritsch are all chasing, defending and tackling when we don't have the ball. I'd rather us back ourselves in to see those players improve their defensive/pressure games than assume they'll never improve. But dismissing the argument against as simply "Brown kicks goals, we need goals, therefore we need Brown" is a bit shallow. It's a fair question to ask and debate to have.

Yes I agree. Fair. They're doing it in a 16-18 team era where the league is striving for equalisation at every turn, though.

Geelong has won 10+ games every year since 2003. They've only missed the finals twice in that period (2006 with 10.5 wins, and 2015 with 11.5 wins). They've won three flags in the last 14 seasons, could be four tonight. And they've made the preliminary final weekend 10 times in the last 14 seasons. All of that to me represents very strong performance. Yes, they've struggled in finals since the 2011 flag (a 6-12 record heading into tonight), and if they lose tonight they'll have won zero flags in the last nine seasons despite finishing in the top 4 six times. IMO, all that says to me is that they were a mark or two below becoming possibly the greatest team in the history of the game over a 14-season stretch.

If he stays, our plan has to be to use him as a mid/forward. He's not a defender and I don't want to see us try to continue pushing that square peg into that round hole. I don't think our midfield depth is so amazing that we can afford to let Harmes go. I also think Harmes is an upgrade on most of the small/mid forwards we played this year. Finally, I think we can think outside the box a bit in terms of using him as a defensive midfielder. I reckon there's a way to start him at centre bounces in the forward 6 but to have him push up after the opening bounce to follow someone. 6-6-6 only constrains that opening bounce, not the rest of the play, and I'm sure I recall Collingwood using Greenwood in a similar way.

Whilst Preuss and 23 for 9, or Preuss and TMac for 9 might not work, adding in our 2021 first rounder tips it the other way. I know we may want to ship TMac off, but this is too much out for not enough back.

That happened after 2019 right? Which was his third consecutive season kicking 60+ goals? Playing for a club that didn't exactly have other stars (so where else was their minimum salary cap going to go)?

They don't cheat. They're just very good at what they do. They have a significant advantage in terms of lifestyle/cost of living, they're culturally ingrained in the Western Districts which is a footy-rich area and known for developing good talent, and they've developed a culture within the club (led significantly by Joel Selwood) by which players accept lower salaries than what the market would otherwise give them to keep the team together. To assist with that strategy, they target established A-graders from other clubs, often weaker clubs, who want to taste success. Players like Dangerfield, Steven, now Cameron, all spent years at weaker clubs getting paid plenty (thanks to the minimum salary cap requirement) but not winning. Having banked plenty of cash, Geelong sells them a lifestyle and success, but not money. They take it because they're comfortable living off, say, $400,000 instead of $600,000 (I mean, it's not like $400,000 is not a comfortable living wage). Coupled with a good drafting and development program which sees them get decent kids in the door with whatever picks they've got, and then building those kids up with good coaching and leadership (there's Selwood again), they're able to maintain their performance level.

Again - correlation but not causation. Our biggest weakness in 2018 was our inability to stop sides scoring when they got through our forward press. That was in large part because the individuals we had back there weren't that good (i.e. Oscar and Frost). Our improved form in 2018 wasn't because we put Oscar and Frost down back, it was because we improved so much around the ball and in our forward line that we hid our weakness (remember, our losses to St Kilda and Sydney in that second half of the year were where our back half was exposed and we didn't score enough from the inside 50s we generated). Oscar has been a limited footballer his entire career. He doesn't deserve much of the name-calling he gets on here and other sites but that doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss his limitations as a footballer. As I've said before, he has no physicality, still gets moved off the ball easily, and struggles to get involved offensively with any impact.

The no pressure argument is true based on previous form. Is the solution to assume that can't change, or is it to implore Weideman and Fritsch to add defensive pressure/chasing/tackling to their games?

I've always thought Hannan has what it takes to make it as a fast medium forward - marking height but pace to go with it. Just never seemed to be able to develop consistency - felt like he'd play a good game or two but then disappear for a game or two. We've got too many mid-sized forwards on our list so this isn't the end of the world. If he makes it at the Dogs, good on him.

I liked Weideman's 2020 but I don't think he can do it alone and I don't think he can do it with Jackson as the only other tall marking option in the forward line in 2021. Jackson's young and inexperienced. He's supremely talented, but we need to be challenging next year, not in 3-5 years. The remaining issues you've raised are no certainties of happening: there's no guarantee we keep any pick we'd spend on Brown and get a "10 year player to add to the team", and there's no guarantee if we hold salary cap space that we bring in anyone better than Brown. The real argument against taking Brown isn't any of that, it's whether we can be a successful side with a forward line of Brown, Weideman, Jackson, Fritsch and two others. For the reasons many have previously articulated in this thread, I think we can. I accept it's no guarantee, but I don't accept it's a necessary failure.

As the posts after yours show, this isn't a good argument. Their list screamed anything other than "top 4 and four-year dynasty" in 2016, but all of the following were on their 2016 list: Vlastuin, Grimes, Martin, Riewoldt, Cotchin, Edwards, Astbury, Houli, Rioli, Rance, Lambert, McIntosh, Broad, Short, Castagna and Soldo). The majority of that group are a win away from becoming triple premiership players. At the time they also had Deledio, Ellis, Grigg, Townsend and Butler - all 2017 premiership players bar Deledio. That list had taken them to three years of finals but no wins (2013-15) followed by a shocker of a 2016. That's a mid-table four-year run. A bit like what we've had (2017, 2018 and 2020 were all mid-table finishes, with 2018 buoyed by the two finals wins, and 2019 being a disastrous shocker). We've seen enough from the core of our list to suggest we've got what it takes. We've been thereabouts for four years, like they were. We've got obvious talent, like they did. We've shown glimpses, like they did. None of this is to suggest we're guarantees to make it, it's just to dispel the notion that our list definitely isn't good enough. I don't buy that argument.