this from T Boswell ... "When your entire vision of your universe is utterly distorted, you make horrid decisions. For example, you worry that if you sign Cousins, one of the dozen best quarterbacks in the NFL and maybe one of the six or eight best, to a long-term, Stafford-like contract that costs $130 million, you will not have enough salary cap room left to “contend for a title.” This is insanity. You sign Cousins, if you still can, because you haven’t had a quarterback who ranked as highly in passing yardage and quarterback rating over a three-year period . . . ever. You don’t make nonsensical projections about how that impacts your Super Bowl chances. YOU HAVE NO SUPER BOWL CHANCES. Not until you are a whole lot better. Cousins is essential to “better,” even if that is a five-year period when you are “only” 40-40 or 45-35. You break your back to sign him, do your best to cope with the cap and draft like hell. And hope.
You can’t build a plausible future until you have a sane view of your past and present. Seen in proper context, the previous two years of 9-7 and 8-7-1 with Cousins and Gruden in the two most important jobs were major progress toward escaping Joke Team status. This 5-7 season, with a couple of more wins a possibility, continues that climb to We Really Are Finally Mediocre, especially when you factor in the worst injury blight in my lifetime of watching this team ... "
it's difficult enough to imagine improving this franchise under dumb and dumber but if we can improve to being a franchise that ranks in the #15-#20 range, we're certainly getting better ... that's something, I guess
