Much of the scholastic world is celebrating Spring Break this week. The NFL kicked if off with quite a bang Friday evening, one of the most action-packed six hours of off-field drama you could squeeze into a day. The fates and futures of several franchises dramatically changed that day. $.01--One of the biggest trades in NFL history went down Friday night, as the Redskins pulled out Daniel Snyder’s titanium credit card and maxed it out to move up and secure the #2 pick in the draft from the Rams. By now you know the details: Washington traded #6 overall, #39 overall, and their 1st round picks in 2013 and 2014 to the Rams for the #2 overall pick, which they will use on Baylor QB Robert Griffin III. That blows away any notion of the antiquated trade value chart and all reasonable expectations for what most teams were willing to offer. As I wrote just last week, this puts unusual pressure on the Rams to make something of all that booty. Even when the team moving up bombs, as San Diego did with Ryan Leaf, the recipient of the multiple picks often struggles to take advantage. League history shows that the aggressive team moving up is rewarded more often than not, even when the team picking up all the extra opportunities fares pretty well. The Rams are getting a tremendous lode for passing on RG3 in favor of Sam Bradford. They will be judged by how well they assemble a team around him versus how well Washington builds around RG3. My personal feelings on Bradford aside (I’ve never been high on him), St. Louis is now charged with using an extra 2nd round pick and two extra first round picks to make a better team than not just what Washington does, but what other teams in the NFC do as well. They have myriad needs and now they have the arsenal of picks to fill most of them. But they’re not likely to get any player as dynamic or game-changing as RG3. That’s part of why Washington made the bold and daring maneuver. Washington has been dying for a franchise quarterback, but beyond that they’ve longed for a face of the franchise. The organization under Dan Snyder has been best known for the constant turnover of coaches, quarterbacks, aging veterans, and lack of legit star power. They even tried to buy someone else’s franchise QB in Donovan McNabb but quickly realized why Philly so willingly gave him away. Griffin is their guy, and that is very important. I think he’s the right man for the job. Aside from his obvious talents on the field Griffin is bright, charismatic, and secure in his own skin. He’s the kind of guy that parents of all skin colors will happily and proudly buy his jerseys for their kids. He helped transform perennial afterthought Baylor into a two-time bowl winner, so he’s experienced with the challenge facing him. The Redkins have a lot of cap room to go out and get him a receiver or two, a guard or two, and some other pieces to augment what is already a decent defensive core group. Here’s a very early prediction: the Redskins will win more regular season games and more playoff games in the next seven years than the Rams, and Griffin will be a big reason why. $.02--The Courtship of Peyton Manning has dominated the NFL headlines for most of the last week. It will continue to do so until Manning decides which paramour is the most desirable, a cotillion of unprecedented dancing for such a prized doyen. The list of suitors includes Denver, Miami, Arizona, and Kansas City. All have their own allures and hitches, but one thing in common: a healthy Peyton Manning makes them significantly better. They must put forth the argument that their own situation best suits Manning’s needs, appealing to his desire to win right away, get paid like a 4-time MVP should on the open market, and facilitate his need to essentially run his own offense and call his own plays. Never mind that three of those teams have quarterbacks nominally in place, while the 4th team, Miami, had better QB play from Matt Moore than all the others. Of course this whole dance could very well be one fruitless pain in the neck. Manning has yet to publicly demonstrate he can actually throw the ball like his old self, or take a hit, or handle the rigors of practicing the day after a 270-pound defensive end slams him into the artificial turf. All these teams are apparently willing to bank on Peyton’s good will and unbridled optimism that four neck procedures and a year of almost complete inactivity haven’t completely eroded his already diminishing skills. I suspect one of these teams will sign Manning without making him throw hard for two consecutive days, hoping against all hope that #18 can recapture the magic and lead the team to newfound glory. I think this whole dance will wind up being one giant waste of time. I don’t blame Manning for milking this for all he can, but if he winds up playing two games and permanently injured, I will look on him in lower regard than I hold Brett Favre for his ridiculously vapid final four years. Manning was given the golden opportunity for a graceful, prideful exit from his friend Jim Irsay, the chance to retire with the illustrious mantra of playing his whole storied career in one uniform, the chance to go out with nary a blemish on his résumé. Instead he has chosen to soak up the attention, literally risking his own neck for a few more minutes in the spotlight that almost certainly won’t live up to his, or the team’s, expectations. This is not going to end well, and that saddens me. My son is six and just developing opinions on football players, and I don’t want his memories of Peyton Manning to be of a faded star chasing unreachable glory in strange uniforms. That’s how I remember Franco Harris, as a Seahawk getting the snot beat out of him. It’s how my younger brother remembers Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith, over-the-hill dreamers in Raiders and Cardinals uniforms. Mention the name Dave Winfield to my 28-year old SABR-obsessed cousin and he thinks of the fat guy in the Indians uniform that struck out more than half the time. I know it’s not a large sampling, but every year that Manning drags on outside of Indy is another year of football fans that will have that as his legacy, not his Indy greatness. I wish more Hall of Fame greats would realize that before subjecting young fans to a tarnished image of a player that didn’t know when to say enough. $.03--It’s just as well Peyton Manning is no longer with the Colts, because he wouldn’t recognize the team anymore. On Friday the Colts cut pretty much every player left that was on the team prior to 2010. Technically the list is Dallas Clark, Joseph Addai, Gary Brackett, Melvin Bullitt and Curtis Painter. With Dwight Freeney and his $19M cap hit in 2012 on the immediate chopping block (they’re hopeful to trade him first) and Jeff Saturday, Reggie Wayne and Pierre Garcon already free agents, fans are going to need to study the roster guide in their programs quite a bit next near. It’s hard to imagine just how radical this sort of overhaul will play in Indianapolis. Just 15 months ago the Colts were universally respected and viewed as a model franchise, a perennial playoff team that you could reliably carve in marble double digit wins every year. Now after just one abysmal season where the franchise QB got hurt, owner Jim Irsay chose the nuclear option. He fired longtime GM Bill Polian and his scion successor Chris. He fired Jim Caldwell and his entire staff. He parted ways with the man who singlehandedly turned Indianapolis into a football town, Peyton Manning. Every offensive starter from the beginning of the 2010 season is now gone. That was just two seasons ago, and the Colts led the league in offense that year. That’s akin to the New York Yankees cutting their entire everyday lineup and replacing it with Pittsburgh’s AAA team. I understand the decision. I even think it’s probably the best way to go, with one giant caveat: they need to make sure they don’t turn Andrew Luck into Tim Couch or David Carr. Obviously Luck is special, but those QBs were both #1 overall picks that never got a chance to show what they could achieve because the teams around them were chaotic cesspools of has-beens and never-will-be’s. Indy fans will hold their noses and swallow the hard medicine for one year, but if the team can’t break the 8-win barrier with Luck in 2013, Irsay might need another midnight escape out of town for his team. New GM Ryan Grigson must get Luck some viable weapons to work with and protect him. Rookie head coach Chuck Pagano also needs lots of new toys as he tries to transform an undersized unit accustomed to playing with big leads into a bigger, tougher, more competitive defense. Good luck Chuck, you’re really going to need it! $.04--There is one QB-needy team that isn’t in the Peyton Manning business and got left behind in the RG3 derby, and that is my hometown Cleveland Browns. Team GM Tom Heckert dawdled on committing to the St. Louis asking price even though the Browns ostensibly had a better package to offer. The Browns are tenuously committed to Colt McCoy but clearly would like either an upgrade or someone to push McCoy to the greatness some within the organization (read: Mike Holmgren) believe he can still achieve. Cleveland holds the #4 pick in the draft but they are giving every indication they would prefer to not use it on Texas A&M quarterback Ryan Tannehill, who is more of a developmental project than the team would like. They also appear reluctant to commit some of their cap room to free agent Matt Flynn, who fits the offensive system well but is essentially redundant skill-wise with McCoy, only more expensive. The Browns appear to have little interest in the other free agents QBs (Jason Campbell, Chad Henne, Kyle Orton, Drew Stanton) that could credibly be deemed starter-worthy. So where does that leave the Browns? They can attempt to trade backwards from #4 and take Tannehill somewhere in the 8-10 overall range while picking up an extra pick. They can gamble that the Flynn market bottoms out (read: Miami and Seattle don’t want to pay him either) and they get him on the cheap. They can go after Brandon Weeden with the #22 overall pick, and they appear to value Tannehill and Weeden as equals, only with the 28-year old Weeden more immediately ready to play. The one thing they can’t do is nothing. Even spending gobs of free agent dollars and both 1st round picks on better weapons for McCoy is unacceptable for Browns fans. Cleveland wanted the big splash, the unquestioned franchise QB they have lacked since Bernie Kosar took them to almost-greatness in the late 80s. For 48 years the Cleveland sports teams have failed to win a title, and no small part of the reason is the hesitancy to take chances like what Washington did with RG3. The few times teams have gambled, it’s mostly worked, from the supplemental drafting of Kosar to the blockbuster trade up to get Brad Daugherty to the seemingly premature lucrative extensions to Manny Ramirez and Kenny Lofton, when the Cleveland franchises have taken big chances they’ve been rewarded with the best seasons of my 39+ years on this planet. Heckert and Holmgren failed to take that into proper account, and the Browns fans are doomed (doomed!) to suffer through another long season wondering what might have been… $.05--Loath to lose out on any media spotlight, the New York Jets saw fit to give Mark Sanchez a rich contract extension on Friday. For some reason, GM Mike Tannenbaum backed up the armored car to Sanchez and dumped $40.5M over the next three years into his driveway. $20.5M of that is fully guaranteed over the next two seasons. There are escalators that could make it worth as much as $55M. Let me get this straight: the Jets have openly expressed interest in Peyton Manning and have told every free agent QB not named Matt Flynn that they are open for business. Sanchez is the exact same player he was three years ago when they drafted him, an inconsistent, aloof bundle of nerves that folds with pocket queens when the flop comes out J-8-7. His teammates have openly criticized his work ethic and wondered aloud if he is the right man for the job. And they had a pretty easy “out” after 2012 if Sanchez failed to improve. And they still paid him a year ahead of time? This extension fully commits the Jets to having The Sanchize as their unquestioned starting quarterback for the next two seasons. Seriously. I’ll give you a moment to clean the spit coffee off your monitor. Apparently they don’t care about all the obvious and glaring detractions. Apparently they don’t care about money, as they paid a significantly higher rate than anyone would have conceivably given Sanchez on the open market. It’s just a bizarre move that makes you wonder what the hell is going on in New York. My best guess as to what they were thinking is that they believe Sanchez will respond to the confidence in him and raise his game and his dedication. I also think this puts more pressure on Rex Ryan to figure out that the head coaching position requires him to pay attention to the offense as well as the defense. This is the sort of bold move that will either result in mad genius or mass firings next year. I’m going to bet on the latter. $.06--Three Denver Broncos were busted for violation of the league’s drug policy. Linebacker DJ Williams, defensive end Ryan McBean, and tight end Virgil Green have all been suspended for positive test results for banned substances. Green got it for an ADHD medication that he now has league approval to take but didn’t at the time, and he got the lightest penalty at four games. McBean has not publicly commented on his 6-game suspension as of Sunday night. Williams has come out swinging against his 6-game suspension. In an eloquently terse statement, Williams slammed the NFL for contending that his urine sample came from something other than a human. He claims the NFL attendant physically witnessed Williams providing the sample, which calls into question how the sample can come back as inhuman. Given the recent Ryan Braun testing controversy in MLB, it wouldn’t surprise me if Williams wins an appeal in front of a neutral arbiter. It is notable that the NFL’s own initial review panel consisted entirely of NFL personnel, an inherent conflict of interest that Williams also railed against. It’s a very interesting case and it bears watching how fervently the NFLPA defends Williams. $.07--There are a host of people here on RealGM that know college basketball a whole lot more than I do, and I encourage you to read them. Just for fun and posterity I have decided to post my picks. My first round upsets: New Mexico State over Indiana, Xavier over Notre Dame, West Virginia over Gonzaga, Harvard over Vanderbilt, Texas over Cincinnati, NC State over SD State and my Ohio Bobcats over Michigan. None of those winners make it past the Sweet Sixteen. My Elite Eight games: Kentucky over UNLV, Florida State over Syracuse, Missouri over Memphis, and North Carolina over Georgetown. My national title game: Kentucky beats North Carolina 77-73. $.08--Draft notes: --Most draftniks have already assumed that Matt Kalil to Minnesota at #3 is a stone cold lock, but I’m not so sure. I think they have to consider Morris Claiborne given their major secondary questions and the quarterbacks in their division. I also think they have to consider Justin Blackmon, though perhaps not at #3. I’m interested to see if someone gets antsy about Cleveland taking Ryan Tannehill at #4 and offering the Vikings a deal to slide back a few spots. --I spent some time breaking down Ole Miss tackle Bobby Massie, and I like what I saw. He’s a better athlete than technician, but he consistently keeps his weight down and moves his feet quickly. If he lands his initial hand punch, which can be too high at times, his man is erased from the play. A good OL coach can clean up his inconsistent footwork (he doesn’t square up real naturally) and teach him how to more functionally use his aggression. As I’ve noted before I see a lot of Bengals LT Andrew Whitworth in Massie, and Whitworth has evolved into a Pro Bowl-level tackle when many draftniks had him pegged as a RT/guard kind of player just like they tag Massie this year. I’m hopeful Lions GM Martin Mayhew sees what I see and takes Massie in the 2nd round. --You are going to start hearing about all sorts of players visiting all sorts of teams. Ignore them. Trust me. You are better off focusing more on the positions of the players than the players themselves, particularly the guys that project to the 3rd round and below. --A player of local interest here in Houston is Rice DE Scott Solomon, and I spent some time working up a scouting report. He’s fairly athletic guy with good strength, and he knows his body and what he can and cannot do very well. Quicker than he looks with a nice dip move and some ability to countermove if stymied at first. Anchored well against the run, though CUSA is not exactly dripping with good OL. Good nose for the ball. Knows how to disengage with a violent rip move. A little stiff in the hips but his ankle flexion is good for his size. Looks like a rotational 4-3 DE that will play in the league for a decade without much fanfare a la Tyler Brayton. --Three humble observations about my fellow draftniks: 1. You are about to see a meteoric rise up draftnik boards by Brandon Weeden, who will go from the 30-50 range on most draftnik boards to the top 25. He’s been that high all along with several teams and the draftnik community is just now catching up. 2. Heading in the opposite direction is Janoris Jenkins, whose personal proclivities off the field are catching up to him (again). It seems NFL personnel people frown on living the Shawn Kemp lifestyle. I actually think the draftnik community is harder on him than the NFL will be, but I highly doubt he is a first round pick. He is indeed a first-round talent between the sidelines. 3. You will almost certainly not see any tight ends in the first round of any mock drafts, and I strongly believe the draftniks have this one dead on. There might not be a tight end taken in the top 50 after Orson Charles’ recent DUI arrest. He has the most potential of the middling group, but in the eyes of the NFL a DUI in draft season is worth two pot busts and a fighting arrest. I’m working on a mock draft right now and I don’t have a TE coming off until Pittsburgh’s 2nd round pick (Dwayne Allen from Clemson), and that is not far-fetched at all. [email protected] Follow me on Twitter @JeffRisdon