Got dragged into Omaha Beach and Mont Saint-Michel yesterday. I’m not much into tourist sites, but have to admit both were worthwhile in different ways. Will talk about some of it when I get back next week on my non-sports podcast.
It’s hard to do justice to Mont Saint-Michel in one photo — it’s a massive ancient castle/fortress/village on an island looking out for endless miles over the ocean and countryside. Omaha Beach was even more surreal after we watched The Longest Day in our hotel room a few nights before. I’m glad we went.
. . .
I hadn’t checked the news for a few days, and holy shit, the 49ers just dealt Lance to the Cowboys for a fourth-round pick.
It’s obviously not a needle mover now, but that the 49ers traded three first rounders and a third just to move up to three to take him and got rid of him for a lone fourth after only 102 career passing attempts blows my mind. How bad must he have looked in practice these last couple years for them to squander that much capital without so much as an extended look? It’s not like Joe Montana is the alternative, either, but last-pick-in-the-draft Brock Purdy who himself is coming off a serious injury and journeyman Jet draftee Sam Darnold.
The 49ers are a unique situation — a team that could win the Super Bowl now with a league-average quarterback — so oddly floor, which Purdy showed last year, is more important to them than ceiling. And Darnold’s floor as a backup, sea-level though it might be, is probably higher than Lance’s which is midway down the Marianas Trench.
Still, for a guy targeted that heavily at No. 3 overall to get dealt so cheaply with the most meager of auditions is shocking.
. . .
I also noticed Jerry Jeudy got hurt. I never considered drafting him early third (where I would have had to take him), but he only made my “What Do You?” list and not my “Obvious Fades.” Jeudy’s going into his fourth year, has been hurt a couple times already, never eclipsed 1,000 yards and struggled with drops as a rookie. You might give him a pass because of the poor QB play, but as I wrote in the “What Do You Do?” post, that didn’t derail Garrett Wilson or Chris Olave last year, and they were rookies.
Jeudy has the pedigree, opportunity and should see an environmental upgrade with Sean Payton, but most receivers that are destined to become stars have already broken out at this point. That he’s already hurt and iffy for Week 1 with a muscle strain from practice fits the profile of a player who isn’t going to get there.
When I see “fits the profile of” that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily who he is — almost any player can change his profile/career-trajectory at any time. But those who do so are the exceptions. I’d probably pass unless he were hanging around in the seventh round or so, and so far he’s not:
