retire

No one who is worth a shit will be cut. The "best" options are the ones who are already out there, and while some of them might be worth bringing in just to challenge our incumbents, as Thelt said, Fox obviously has no interest in that. If we were going to do something, it should have happened in February.

 

Is it unreasonable to think a guy could fit your description yet still be better than the less than impressive options we already have?

Also, we cut a couple of guys last year who got snatched up (and btw, we may have been able to get something for them before letting them go, as the Bears might have just done with us).

 

working off the list from Scout.com (minus RFAs) and disregarding Kiel who has a shitload of legal problems the short list is:

Shaun Williams 30
Tony Parrish 31
Tebucky Jones 32
Matt Bowen 30
Lance Schulters 32
Robert Griffith 36
Sammy Knight 31
Andre Lott 28
Mike Logan 32
Troy Vincent 36

wouldn't surprise me if they announced re-signing Williams in the next 24 hrs or less.

 

what a moran

 

It’s not the next level, but another level of football


Most football players don’t consider themselves former football players.
Tom Sorensen
The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Although we don’t need more professional football, I’d love to see the All-American Football League make it. It will be like graduate school for former college players.

The folks behind it, among them former NCAA President Cedric Dempsey and former ACC commissioner and Notre Dame athletics director Gene Corrigan, will decide this fall whether to commit. If they do, the first game will be played in spring 2008.

Rosters will be filled with former college stars and teams will be based in cities known for their interest in college football, among them Raleigh. Players must have a college degree.

I knew little about the league until a reader sent me a picture from a July 3 invitation-only tryout. With the ball was Tristan McLendon. Trying to stop him was Todd DeLamielleure. We know these guys.

Back when Tristan was T.A., he set national records as an Albemarle High running back. He played at N.C. State and tried out for at least two NFL teams.

DeLamielleure was a linebacker for Duke. He transferred to Hofstra when the Blue Devils canned his father, Joe, an assistant coach and Hall of Fame offensive lineman.

With Joe out of the way, Duke is a national power — in basketball. But it still can’t win a football game.

Whether the AAFL can entice fans to fill the bleachers is questionable. But there’s no question it can fill the rosters with talent.

“You can ask a lot of the guys that played in Europe or went to NFL camps,” says DeLamielleure, 28. “There are a few stars on every NFL team and then there are about 80 guys that are pretty darn close, and if you changed jerseys you couldn’t tell the difference.”

He was in camp with the Indianapolis Colts in 2002. He played in NFL Europe in ‘03 with the Rhein Fire and suffered a shoulder injury that ended his season and, he feared, his career. In ‘04, he was in camp with the Carolina Panthers and the Buffalo Bills.

Real life beckoned. If DeLamielleure, who majored in history with a minor in law enforcement, couldn’t be part of a football team, he wanted to be part of another. His grandfather was a fireman.

I wanted to stay around here and do something that would help people and would offer that feeling of camaraderie that football did,” he says from Charleston.

He has been a firefighter there for 2½ years.

“There are a lot of similarities to football in the way you rely on each other, but it’s on a bigger scope,” he says. “It’s life and death.”
He was at home June 18 when he heard about the deadly fire at the Sofa Super Store.

“That would have been my shift three weeks earlier,” DeLamielleure says.

“A buddy called me to tell me. I got in my car, but he said, ‘Don’t go down there. They closed all the highways.’ I drove to my station to see if I could help.”

Nine firefighters died; DeLamielleure had worked with four of them. He drove one of the bodies from the funeral home to the burial.

“That’s when it really hits home,” he says.

Eleven days after the service, he drove to Orlando, Fla., for the tryout. Knowing how hard he had taken the loss of his comrades and worried about him being alone with his thoughts, Joe accompanied him on the drive.

A conditioning fanatic, Todd been working out twice a day. Trying out had seemed so important. Not anymore.

“It paled in comparison to what had happened,” he says.
But when he got onto the field, muscle memory kicked in. Football is what he trained to do most of his life.

“It was like riding a bike,” he says. “I ran better than I have ever run. Finally there’s something tangible with football again.
“I remember when I got hurt walking off the field (in Europe) and I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to have to delay this a year.’ I never thought, ‘Oh, well, I’m done with football.”’

Most football players don’t consider themselves former football players. They simply haven’t found their next team. DeLamielleure found one in Charleston. Maybe he’ll find another in Raleigh.

 

Fair points, but there are certain positions where useful guys get cut and others where they generally don't. My memory isn't perfect, but I don't remember any decent safeties being cut in training camp the last couple of years. Plus I just don't see how they'd be better than Williams or Vincent, who Fox obviously doesn't want.

 

what is his malfunction? seems like a tackling machine.

 

Slow, slow, slow.

 

My second point was more a jab at the team for not getting anything for guys who got snatched up.

Maybe we'll get lucky and find someone, but I know the chance is slim. Still baffled by the refusal to move on a FA in the offseason.

 

the hardest part about some of these old guys is that the SS isn't the spot open.