The Bears' signing of Chris Chandler seems to have closed one possible place for Drew to end up. Buffalo would be a good fit except for the AFC East factor, which pretty much makes it impossible. The last I've heard is that the Bungles are taking a close look.....


***


Also heard that, on the Joey Harrington front, the Lions are ready to pick, but they may be pre-empted by Carolina, which supposedly is having new doubts about Chris 'AARP' Weinke's long-term prospects....


Edited for omnipresent typos...

[ April 16, 2002: Message edited by: Wurm ]

The Bengals are oh-so-close to contending in the AFC Central, er, North. They owe it to their fans to make a serious run at Bledsoe. They have a top notch defense and a great talent in the backfield in Corey Dillon. A quality QB makes them, IMO, a real threat to Pittsburgh for the division title.

And I don't care how many times Steve Spurrier says he's satisfied, he cannot be content to start the season with Danny Wuerffel taking the snaps. The Redskins should be taking more of an interest.

Chicago and Seattle would have also made sense, but apparently they are not interested.

Teams like Dallas, Detroit, Buffalo, Carolina that need QB help should draft a QB. Bledsoe can help a team that is already built, not a team that is looking to rebuild.

[ April 16, 2002: Message edited by: George_vikingfan ]

I certainly think/hope that Spurrier will take an interest in Bledsoe for the skins.
I do think his biggest rservation is upsetting the relationship he has with his protege Wuerffel, whom he coached at Florida.
But they both should realize (like Pitino and Antoine Walker did at the Celtics) that the pros are a completely different game.

[quote]Where Will Drew Bledsoe End Up?

---

In my bedroom. He'll be my personal QB!

George, Jerry Jones has too much of an ego to go after Drew Bledsoe or Joey Harrington. He would never say that he made a mistake by drafting Quincy Carter. Hell would freeze over first.

From what I'm hearing, you're right that Spurrier and/or Danny Boy are not content starting Wuerffel and are might make a desperate attempt to get into the top ten of the 1st round to get Harrington if he's available.

Tzeile, you have a knack for lightening the moment.

He's shufflin' off to Buffalo:
After much speculation and
several trade overtures, the New England Patriots and
Buffalo Bills reached an agreement Sunday to trade
quarterback Drew Bledsoe, the Super Bowl champions'
Web site reported.

The Patriots will receive the Bills' first-round pick in the
2003 NFL Draft for Bledsoe.

Since the Pats got an unconditional pick, it'll make the two Bills-Pats games next year all the more interesting. In other words, the worse that Bledsoe does, the worse the Bills record will probably be, and the higher the Pats' spot in the 2003 draft.

Now that the Bledsoe era has officially come to an end in New England, I have to say I'm pretty ambivalent about the guy. On one hand, DB feels betrayed by Belichik because BB told him he'd have a chance to compete for the starting job again, when in fact BB never planned on deviating from Brady. Certainly no player of DB's stature deserves to be treated that way, assuming that's what happened (folks around here suspect that BB told DB a "necessary sports lie"). Then when you look at the way Bledsoe handled the rest of the season, as a $100 million franchise quarterback who stood at the sidelines with a clipboard and did everything he could to help the guy who displaced him, you can't say enough about the guy.

While I have a lot of respect for Bledsoe's character, I couldn't warm to him as a player. I get the feeling that the guy's too coddled, like he's been told all his life that he's this can't-miss Golden Boy. Even though his performance was slowly but surely declining since the mid-1990s, he never put in that extra effort to re-make himself as a player ... all his weaknesses were just getting more noticeable. Compare that to the then 3rd-stringer Tom Brady, who worked his tail off in last year's off-season and actually outperformed Drew in training camp. And now, instead of resting on his Super Bowl MVP laurels, Brady hired himself a speed coach in addition to his regular trainer and will work his tail off again this off-season. I'm not saying that Bledsoe doesn't work, but IMHO he relies too much on his gun, as if it were the magical offensive solution. That might have been the case from Pop Warner through college ball, but NFL QBs gotta do a lot more than just drop back and sling it.

Bledsoe's a good guy, and I wish him all the best. But with all due respect, I'm predicting the Pats win both games vs. the Bills pretty easily.