Sports Uncaged 2 26

The WCCU radio station discusses various topics related to NFL free agency and the salary cap. They talk about the Bengals franchise-tagging Tee Higgins and speculate on the future of Tyler Boyd. They also discuss the increase in the salary cap and which teams should make big moves in free agency. The Washington Commanders, Tennessee Titans, and New England Patriots are mentioned as teams with money to spend. They also discuss the quarterback situation for the Commanders and the potential needs for the Titans and Patriots. You are listening to WCCU Radio, Coastal Carolina student-run radio station. I am Braxton Miller and I am here with Christian. This is Sports Uncaged. It is two o'clock. Listen, NFL season's over, right? But free agency is coming up and we just got our first ever free agency move. Not really a move, but the Bengals just franchise-tagged Tee Higgins. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, so we've gotten to this point of the year where franchise tagging is a pretty big deal. Obviously, Tee Higgins was probably one of the premier free agents that was coming into this class. So to see him just be kind of wiped away by the franchise tag does kind of stink. I'm not going to lie. There's a lot of, it seems like Tee Higgins was directed to just about, or projected to go to just about every team in this free agency from Carolina to pretty much, I want to say like every contender was like, hey, you should get and sign Tee Higgins. For the Bengals though, it makes too much sense to keep them down. The short term, realistically, is probably not going to be that next year. Right. I mean, and honestly, with the franchise tag, you can still trade him. Like in the, probably it would be week eight to get some, you're going to get draft picks with him, some good draft picks with him. And yeah, my thing with Tee Higgins, I thought it was a great move, but I think this means Tyler Boyd's out. I think that's definitely what it means because again, that's 21 million, but the Bengals do have a lot of cap, but I think Tyler Boyd's a little bit older. He was there whenever. He was like that first good receiver that they had next to AJ Green with him being out for so long. He's just kind of like that guy that's been there forever. But yeah, I feel his time's probably up. You're not going to be able to, I think he's probably going to get a nice little offering for the agency. It's like a contending team. Not just like veteran, like a veteran presence, but he's not a guy that's going to, he doesn't have drop issues. He's just a reliable fast pitcher. Right. If I'm one of those teams that like don't have a lot of cap, but need a receiver, I would go Tyler Boyd. I don't, because I don't think he would ask for much at all. Because he knows he's not the biggest contributor, but he could be a wide receiver too. Solid wide receiver too. For sure. Really just give a team, or even with a rookie quarterback, like it's just a safety kind of option. A guy who's going to run his routes well, not going to complain, like there's not really going to be drama with him. Just something to kind of like, hey, welcome to the league. Yeah, exactly. And 100%, like maybe even like some year two guys, Kupkoff, Panthers, you know, or Anthony Richardson since Pittman's on the go. You're listening to WCCU radio. We'll be right back after the break. You're listening to WCCU radio station, Coastal Carolina radio station. I am here with Christian, and we are back on SportsLink Cage, and we're going to follow up into this first segment here. The NFL just announced that each and every team gets 10 more million on the salary cap. They increased the salary cap. What are your thoughts on that? I feel that's probably a pretty common thing this year. Right. But not this year, but in general, just the NFL and all the league really expanding their salary cap. I like it, you know, give the players the money that they've been working for. 100%. And I think it makes it more fun, especially for like certain teams that already have a high salary cap, man, they can splurge a little bit more, you know, and some of those teams that have those star players that need to pay them, you know, that 10 million will help a lot. And as we talk about that, we're going to talk about what team really needs to make the biggest move in free agency so far with their salary cap. Yeah, a lot of teams out there not looking so great coming off of a bad year with money to spend, like the Washington Commanders, Tennessee Titans and the New England Patriots with the Bears being the top four with no salary left. And there's really no reason that any one of those teams should not want to spend their money. Right. 100%. Like they're all just kind of in the, we need to bring in more talent phase, kind of like Houston last year. Especially the Bears, right? Come on. Like with the Justin Fields situation, it's going to be Justin Fields or Caleb Williams, you know. And you got almost 80 million to splurge now. You have 68 million now with the cap raise, you get 10 more million. I mean, you got to get yourself another receiver who knows that they're going to draft one. I personally think that they should get one in free agency. Maybe some defense you could re-sign, Jalen Johnson, that cornerback, that's huge. That's got to be their first big get, really. Other than the whole quarterback situation that's going on there, they need to re-sign Jalen Johnson. They already signed Montess Sweat to that extension. And let's dish it off to a team that is going on the full rebuild road. Or should they? The Commanders. Okay. The Commanders, I don't know if it's a rebuild because there was never anything there. Right. Exactly. And that's why I'm saying like, but they have weapons. Personally, I think they, obviously with, you know, McLaurin and all of them, I think they don't re-sign Curtis Samuel. I think they go after another big receiver. They're in free agency. The question is, is the quarterback position. Are you sticking with Sam Howell? Or you could possibly bring back Kirko over there? Kirko changed. I would say Sam Howell did not play bad. Or as bad as you would have honestly thought he would have going into last year against such a, you know, that's such a depleted team that they were in. They weren't really in many close games. They were a bottom team. They projected to be a bottom team in the beginning of the year. And then that expectation never changed. Right. But I don't know how much of that is all on, you know, the fourth rounder, not rookie, but second year, first year starting quarterback in Howell. He had some turnover problems, but what rookie quarterback doesn't, you know. Right. 100%. But at the same time, I don't think he necessarily showed them enough to not draft a quarterback. Especially if they like, if they really like Caleb Williams, they can trade up. If they fall in love with one of the, not Williams, maybe like Drake, Manny, or Jadon Damien. So like, wow, this is our guy after he's going through the scouting. Then I wouldn't, I would see them taking a quarterback for sure. Yeah. Even a quarterback in the later rounds. I mean, this is a deep depth of a quarterback class. It's one of the best ones we've had in years, you know, since like probably Lamar in that draft, or Josh Allen in that draft. And yeah, I know I 100% agree with you. I don't think Sam Howell had a bad season. And also with that horrific O-line too. I mean, if you want to stick with Howell, you got to sign some O-line guys. For sure. Cause I feel their skill player is already pretty good. Right. Exactly. Terry McLaurin, not much more to say about Terry McLaurin. Dotson. Dotson was good last year. He just continues to miss a lot of time. And that's something that's probably going to be really concerning going into his third year now. But still Dotson showed great promise in his first two years. And I think he's going to be a good receiver. And especially with like defensive guys. I mean, to be fair, a lot of defensive guys show out as rookies more than offensive guys. So you can get a lot of defensive players in the draft. I don't know how much draft capital they have, but I'm sure it's more than others. But switching on, let's talk about the Titans. Weird team. Very weird. They fired Ray Bull for no reason. Right. And I just want to talk about what do you think that they're going to focus on? I think they brought in the Bengals former offensive coordinator to replace Ray Bull, which I don't like the firing of Ray Bull, but it seems like a pretty good replacement there. I get it. A lot of teams want to get younger. You see the offense obviously working in Cincinnati. You're like, oh, okay, we'll just bring this offensive line here to work with Leo Levis, which is what I think the Bears kind of messed up on, not bringing in an offensive line coordinator, which I think is. But they are really just so kind of stuck in the middle. They've still got, well, they have the choice to re-sign Barrett Henry and De'Andre Hopkins this year. It's looking like Hopkins is going to be back from the Twitter fingers he has. It's looking like that. Barrett Henry, I don't know. And if I were them, I wouldn't re-sign Henry for the fact of what the game now is doing with receiving backs, because we know Henry ain't even close to anything of a receiving back. But again, that's a big guy that was your offense at one time, but with this new coordinator, who knows? He likes Levis. Obviously the Bengals, when he was offensive coordinator, were one of the best passing teams in the NFL, and they passed a lot, even with a guy like Joe Mixon in the backfield. Right, exactly. And I think it'd be big to get Hopkins and maybe even another receiver in free agency, because again, getting Callahan as your coach, man, it's a good idea because he ran that offense so well in Cincinnati with three great receivers. As well as a young quarterback. Exactly. So I think it's an alley-oo situation, man. It's right there for you to exceed that potential of that team. And let's talk about one of the hottest teams going into this draft, the Patriots. So the Patriots, like I was saying earlier, are one of those teams that they just desperately need talent. They signed the most average players last year. They're really good at that. They really went into last year with just the most okay roster, and they got the expected results. I do think they're going to draft Jayden Daniels. I just, for whatever reason, had to pick with Bill Belichick on. I think this would start a new era in New England. And the rest of the money, all of this money, it's going to be, I don't want to say difficult, to bring players into New England now. It's definitely not that same luxury as it's been with Bill Belichick there. And obviously Brady in the past, where players just want to go there. They'll take less to go there. That's not the case anymore. I don't know many athletes that want to go live in New England and be a part of a 3-13 football team. Right, exactly. 100%. And even with the hiring of Mayo, not a lot of people know about Mayo except Patriots players that played on the Patriots before. And again, apparently, what I've heard, they're going to stick with Matt Jones. I doubt it. We'll see. I think Daniels will get drafted. I think that's just something you got to do. Another team I want to talk about, I'm going to skip over the Colts because that's just a team that I think is going to do some, I don't know. They can really do anything. Yeah. But let's talk about the Texans. This team could go to the Super Bowl and they have a salary cap of $67 million. Man, what are they going to do? Obviously, it's going to be defensive stuff, but what are they going to do on defense? That's where I think the majority of this money is going to be spent. If they're able to get one of the better interior linebackers in a pretty good free agency linebacker class, that could go a long way for them, especially with D'Amico Ryan's over there coaching the defense. But really, I feel like they've got to go, their main targets for the offseason is to improve the line, protect stride, because we've already seen him running around throwing these sidearm, baseball-type passes. Give them three seconds to throw the ball and see what he does. Exactly. Have to go line. Other than that, their offense is, unless they're upgrading at the running back position, which is a real possibility. Yeah, it could be a thing. Singletary is not. And even Damian Pearce this year didn't live up to his expectations. Running back, I think, is a move they could make. One of the older guys, like Derrick Henry, would be crazy. It would be very weird seeing Henry Houston, actually, but I think there's a real possibility. Yeah, I honestly think Houston is the one for Henry, because you've got a team that could go downfield so well in the passing game, and then you're in the red zone. If you're struggling in the red zone, shoot, just give it to Henry, right? He's going to fight for those yards. And the last team, just real quick, what are the Cardinals going to do? Anything. Right, exactly. Get a whole new team, I don't want you to know. And that's what I think. And with Gannon as the head coach now, I think you've got to get some offensive guys. I don't know if you're going to re-sign Hollywood Brown, because he's been injury, injury, injury. This has been WCCU Radio, Sports Uncaged, and we'll be right back. You're listening to WCCU Radio, Coastal Carolina's student-run radio station. We are back with some more Sports Uncaged, and we're going to go into the second segment called Re-sign or Replace. And let's start it off with the guy that is the most controversial right now in free agency, Kurt Cousins. Yeah, it's always tough when you're like a middle of the pack to average quarterback. Like you're going to get a deal, but how do you, from a team's perspective, how are you not overpaying this player? And then from the player's perspective, how are you getting enough? There's that power struggle. And with Kurt, you know the Vikings seem hesitant to pay Jefferson. Right, exactly. I don't think they're going to pay Kurt, but at the same time I can't imagine him leaving Minnesota. Right, I think he fits Minnesota so well, you know. I don't know if he would do that amazing on a lot of teams, man. And then also on top of that, you can have your critiques of Kurt Cousins, but statistically he's around the 10 to 15 range of quarterbacks in the league. How confident are you that you're going to be able to replace him in a short amount of time and get a quarterback of that caliber or better, honestly, from just coming? They didn't have such a bad year that they have a top pick to go after a quarterback. Yeah. They're just kind of in a weird place, and I feel like that's going to not force their hand, but I feel like it would be more beneficial for them to sign him rather than to just let him walk away. Yeah, and I think, like, I don't think Kurt Cousin's asking price is going to be much because we know Kurt. He's more of a, he will probably take a pay cut for the team to win because he just wants to win, you know. And again, we're going to go into this next player, another person that's huge. What is Chris Jones going to do? Chris Jones, it's like every year he's going to do it. The past, like, two, three years now. Even holding out this year in the beginning of the year, missing that line game in the beginning of the year. He is so good. Yeah. So underrated on that Chiefs team just because they play with Tachibana and Travis Kelsey. But without him, they don't win their Super Bowls, you know. Right. He's been such a dominant force on what was a great defense this year, especially in previous years, when they haven't been as good. He's been the number one guy there. And really, they're kind of saving grace. Like, when they were coming in and it would let up a lot of points, but somehow that Chiefs defense would make the timely play, the timely stop. Most of the time, he was a major part of it. Right. Like, when you watch the Super Bowl in the second half, it's just, oh my goodness, Chris Jones, Chris Jones, Chris Jones, every play. Like, he had that one drive where he made all three plays, tipping the ball, you know. Like, and again, like, they have good edges in Willie Gaye and Carl Aftis, but that interior line is literally just Chris Jones, you know. Another play I want to talk about that's going to hurt me because I don't know what's going to happen, Brian Burns. What do you think, Brian? What about Brian? Brian Burns is such a great player. Again, very underrated because he's been stuck in Carolina. And for the Panthers, I think he leaves. I just think it's...there's been trade rumors the past, like, at least year and a half now, maybe two years, that I feel like once you kind of have trade requests out there, they're out there. You just live with them. Things can be okay and you can deal with it, but it's not, like, you didn't put that in for no reason. You didn't want to be traded for no real reason. That was an opportunity to go in command of big, big payday, and I think that's what he's going to be in for. Yeah. It doesn't really make sense for the Panthers to re-sign him. Yeah. And if anything, if they don't re-sign him, like, or want to re-sign him, you could franchise tack him and trade now with the new, you know, general manager because they, you know, the Rams offered two first rounds for Brian Burns a couple years ago, but obviously Frederer declined it, and that's why he was fired. Again, another guy I want to talk about who had a great year for what he did in the past, Aker Mayfield. Yeah. I personally, I think the Buccaneers, I think you've got to re-sign him because of how he played. Like, come on. Hey, he led them to the playoffs after losing Brady in a year where there was a lot of noise around them, how they were done, they were finished, and he honestly, he had his struggles, he did struggle, but he pushed the team to the playoffs, and they won a playoff game. They competed with the Lions, barely lost in the NFC Championship game, so a really good thing for the NFC Napster. I don't think there's anything more that Baker Mayfield really could have realistically have done this year. He, for sure, needs to be the priority for the Buccaneers re-sign because, kind of like the Vikings, they're not in a, with her cousins, they're not in a situation to easily replace him or get someone of his caliber at this point. I'll say after last year's season, Baker and Kerr would be around the same range. Yeah, especially with an older team, you know, and like, you want to keep some guys that can at least compete because in such a weak division, too, you know, you want guys that compete, and you're going to lose some veterans, especially on the defense, like Levante David. I don't think he's going to sign, you know, and again, Mike Evans is a free agent, too. I think Baker Mayfield, I think you got to re-sign him to at least a one or two year deal for the next time you get a franchise QB. Exactly. You don't necessarily have to make him the face of your team, but he's a good, at worst, he's a good placeholder at best he could be. He's still young enough to do that. Yeah, exactly. Another guy I want to talk about, Saquon Barkley, who had many rumors last year about signing somewhere else, but then he got franchise tagged. Who knows what he's going to do now, you know? Oh, I've been, as an Eagles fan, I've been saying that I can't wait for Saquon to be out of the division for years. Also, being from around the Penn State area, just watching Saquon, it's like, man, I want that boy. Right, you know, come on. I've been waiting for him to leave, but he's been so, like, so loyal to the Giants for so long after the whole contract situation last year, and then taking, I don't know if it'd be a pay cut, but not enough pay for someone to his caliber, especially coming off that year, to stay in New York on the franchise tag, no complaining, supported Daniel Jones, supported Tommy DeVito, anyone who's coming in there. Saquon was pretty much doing his best to take the whole load off of him, but with that being said, I think this is probably his best opportunity to leave New York, and if he doesn't do it this year, probably won't when he has any, like, gas left in the tank. Like we were saying earlier, Houston. Houston could be another huge spot for a running back, especially if they want to win, like if that running back wants to win, and with that team, you're only helping it with Saquon, any team, you're only helping with Saquon, you know. Another running back, Josh Jacobs, who I'm gonna toss up between Josh because he's so injury prone sometimes, but he is effective when you play him right. Yeah, definitely hard-nosed style running. Right. Just from the Raiders, I think they should also get rid of Devontae Adams. I don't think refounding Josh Jacobs means much. I think you gotta go full. Full rehab, like rebuild, you know. Get all your resources back. Don't have to pay these guys. Maybe get some picks for Devontae. It's not even a knock on Josh Jacobs. He's a great running back. This year, not as great as last year, but that year was very, like, he was the best running back in the league that year. Follows it up with another thousand yard campaign. It's not like he did anything wrong, necessarily. It's just the way the team's trending and the direction they're going. It doesn't make sense to bring him back. Yeah, I'm gonna have to agree with that. I don't think it makes sense for them to bring him back and just draft another guy. I don't even think Josh wants to be on the Raiders, you know. I think he just wants to go somewhere else. Another guy, like we said, with Baker Mayerfield, Mike Evans. Personally, I think Mike Evans is going to resign just because he's been there for so long, you know, and they've had success, you know, and if Baker's coming back, Mike Evans will probably want to come back. Yeah, I completely agree with that. He's got the ring. He's got, yeah, the ring, one ring. He's got all these consecutive thousand yard seasons. Ten in a row. Yeah, he's got an established system that works for him. Unless Baker goes, I think Mike Evans will be back. Yeah. At this point, he plays another couple years. He's a Hall of Fame, I think he's already a Hall of Fame receiver. He's a Hall of Fame Tampa legend who never left. Right, exactly. And again, with the Chris Jones, the Chiefs, they got another guy who had a phenomenal year, a legerious need. All pro, legerious. Come on, and you know, after that year, he's going to be asking for some money. Well-earned money. Right, exactly. I don't know if it's going to be the Chiefs that give it to him, but he's going to get it for sure. If you're the Chiefs, and Chris Jones are your main two concerns, resigning, pretty much everybody else can, you know, kind of kick rock and roll. Yeah, you know, keep your core together, and these two are part of your core. Chris Jones, I would understand more if they let go of Jones, because he's probably going to want a lot of money. Jerry seems young, coming off an all-pro year. He needs to for sure come back to Kansas City. If the Chiefs organization for sure knows that, hope he goes somewhere else. Yeah, I honestly hope he goes somewhere else, too. I'm sick and tired of that defense. I'm sick and tired of that team winning, you know. And our last guy I want to talk about, again, with the Buccaneers. Seems like these same teams just have three agents they got to sign. Antoine Winfield, who had a great year. First team all-pro, must I say. It seems like his worst year, so it's great. He's been a Pro Bowl team. Right. No reason they should not resign him. They want to pay him, just with Baker. We'll see if they can. Yeah, yeah, 100%. He's a great tackler, a good ball hawk. I mean, there's just nothing you can't go wrong with, Antoine Winfield. This has been Sports Uncaged. We'll be right back after the break. You're listening to WCCU Radio, Coastal Carolina student-run radio station. And with this third segment on Sports Uncaged here, we're going to switch it a little bit to the NBA, though it is, you know, a little bland right now for the NBA. There's still stuff to talk about, especially for the future of the NBA. We're going to start off with Victor Winbinyana, who is quite clearly the Rookie of the Year winner. Will Winby bring the Spurs a ring in a few years? I think it's got to be, for sure. He just put up a, I don't even know the word, it was like a quintuple double? He's been putting up all these 5x5 games, too. Absolutely insane. The only problem is the rest of the team is out to get them. They are terrible. So I feel like not in the next 2-3 years, but maybe go looking at 4-5 by that point. But with him, it's really possible at any given moment. You're just going to need to continue to give him help. But he's literally coming in here, into the league, our age, 19 years old, and dominating. Like, straight up dominating. There's a chance that he is going to be on all NBA teams at the end of this year, as well as the Defensive Player of the Year as a rookie. He's coming in one of the best rookies since, you know? Ever. Yeah, really. Victor, again, whenever he was going into the draft, we all knew he was the first pick. We all knew he was going to be good once he came out. It was a little slow, by a little slow I mean the first 20 games to get him going. But this is a guy like Giannis, man. But again, like Giannis, whenever he was a rookie, he wasn't performing like that. Wimby, straight up. Yeah, Wimby, straight up, just out of the gun, the first season he's ever played in the NBA is performing with these stats. And it's just solely because he doesn't have a team with him. I mean, the Spurs they're not good, you know? That team is bad. And again, with Popovich, I think he'll be coaching for, I don't know, man. He's getting up there in age. I think you do need to get a new coach whenever Pop retires, but I think it'd be disrespectful to fire him a little bit. Right, exactly. But if you do fire him, you know what? You got to rebuild him. You got to rebuild around this team. You got to build it around him. Do not trade him whatsoever, because this is a generational talent that you have on this team. Yeah, you have to be doing everything in your power to make sure he doesn't want to go to a big market team and just leave when his contract is over. Because that is absolutely the worst situation for the Spurs. With Pop, Pop is probably gone. I'll give him three years. I would say three years, too. I think three years is the... Realistically, I just don't think he's going to be there kicking for much longer, especially if they're not going to be competitive like they are this year. It can be a little bit of a slow burn, especially when you're going for draft picks. You need a couple in a row. We'll see what happens with this free agency, though, and how players are going to want to go and join Wimby. Right, exactly. Who wouldn't want to join that? Again, he's playing like Luka. Look what Luka's doing now when he has other weapons on his team. I think that could be the same for Wimby with the playmaking ability that he has. That's a big... Just give him a solid point guard that's not Jeremy Millen. Just give him a traditional point guard, put some playmaking shooting around him, and then... I would say he's probably best at the four. You can run him at the center, obviously, but just the way he plays, he plays like a big four. That's perfectly fine. You get just a rebounding center around him. You don't need a guy that's going to come in and take away a bunch of shots. You just need someone who can score and facilitate, as well as probably play some defense on the other end, but you really don't. You can get away with not great defensive players with Wimby on the floor. Right, and having a big playmaker like that who can draw fouls and get at the free throw line just sets an imposing threat as a defender. Speaking of fouls, let's talk about the whole technical foul problem going on with the NBA. Is there a problem with the technical fouls in the NBA? Look, I want to say definitely there is. What happened? Let the boys play. Sometimes there's some... I'm not saying get rid of Texans in its entirety, but chirping's part of the game. Right, come on. How are you expecting these guys to put on a show for you at the end of the day and entertain you if they don't care about it? Right, you got to get in the player's head. That's what you do. Like trash talking is a pure like a factor to sports in general. It's a pure thing that just comes out of competition. Right. It's part of the game to a certain extent. Right, you know trash talk. Shoot, they talk trash in water polo. Like, come on. You get in the opponent's head and even some of these technical fouls, like passing the ball too hard to a ref and by too hard, like you just regularly passed it, you know. There's a lot of tic-tac-y fouls with the refs, especially this year and probably last year as well. It just seems to continue to like escalate further and it's just some of them are just so like, how is that a foul? Like, if you show this to the average person, what did they do wrong? It's like, what do you want them to do? Right, exactly. And like bouncing off of this ref's thing, like should they be fined sometimes for some of the calls they do, like held accountable by the NBA? I think, I don't, like in theory that sounds good, but then the realistic, realistically fining them for certain calls, I feel like that would just lead to them not calling anything. Right, exactly. I'm sure the old heads would be going crazy, throwing their popcorn in the air. Yeah, let them fight each other on the court. Right. But like, yeah, that's awesome to see. Like, now it's at the Palace, but it's got to be enforced to a little bit. They definitely should be held more accountable. You just kind of have to explain their calls, especially, because it's so easy to get them wrong. Like, being a ref is not an easy job, especially in the professional league with everyone kind of on you at any moment. You're the favorite person on the court. Right. Like, everybody hates you, no matter what you're going to say. You can make the right call, and if it's an obvious foul, there's still going to be people yelling at you. Right. I mean, because obviously you can't look at the thing in slow motion while it's happening. You know, it happens immediately. You're always going to have a fan that's going to heckle or some coach that's going to be like, oh my gosh, I agree, I disagree with this, you know. Like, you're never going to be right as a ref. Exactly. There's no winning. It's like politics. There's no winning. And it's part of the job. It's not the biggest part of the job, you know. And again, let's talk about NBA still. What team do you think is best suited for the future in the NBA to win the finals? Like, future and now. Well, maybe not now, but the future, obviously, of the City Thunder. Yeah, come on. That's what I was going to say. That's like the give me in. Right. I feel just, their whole, like, their oldest player on their team is a 25-year-old Che. Like, come on. What do we, you know, and they've got all these draft picks and all these assets and still cash phase for now. Right. It will be expensive at some point. You know, Chet, you're going to have to pay Chet a lot. Even Jalen Lewis is going to get a lot. And then their role players, like Isaiah Jones, you know, just random spot up guys that they have. With their assets, it's almost, I wish they would have cashed in on some of them at this deadline. Not that there really was a star to get. Yeah, but I think they have 18 picks in this year. Right. And like, again, like, when you talk about the deadline, I mean, they gave two guys to the Hornets for Gordon Hayward, which, I mean, I agree. I think, I think to help that team, a veteran presence is a good idea. You know, you can go a long way with a veteran presence in a young team like that, which young team by itself is dominating the NBA already, you know. And yeah, I agree with the picks. I think you can, honestly, you could trade some of those picks for some big guys in the future, you know. Exactly. They could have cashed in. Not to say that this trade deadline really was not that good and bringing in, like, probably the top trade asset with not that much money would not have, just don't need them, you know. Yeah. But in the future, what about a guy like Laurie, like Laurie Mackinnon, maybe the Jazz are like, yeah, we don't really want them, or not, we really don't want them, we really don't want to trade him and get rid of him. Here's three first round picks, some salary fillers, you still not want to trade him for the three first round picks when you're not going to be contending? Right, exactly. And like, again, with, with just the Thunder being so young, I mean, like, this team is so fit for the future. But again, with paying these guys, I mean, with having so many guys, I think some veterans would be good and trading at the deadline would be just a good idea. And I think this year was perfect for that, because this draft coming up, no one really knows if it's the first pick or not, you know, it's a weird draft. And I'm gonna say one more thing. Who's your sleeper team for the NBA, like, to win the finals? Yeah, this year, and I'm not talking about teams that dominate, I mean, like, probably the eight, five to the eight seed type deal. Sleeper team, I'll give you one out east and one out west. Okay, the Timberwolves are high right now. I like the Timberwolves. Because no one kind of respects them. And they don't really have any reason to, but they could be a team where A could get high, go on a run. Defense is also so good. Cats playing better than you've seen them in years, you know. And then on the other side, Miami, you already know the Heat are gonna win. I was gonna say Miami, too, you know. It's just that team. You know, they play better as the lowest seed in the playoffs, man. And this has been Sports Uncaged. We'll be right back after the break. Welcome back to Sports Uncaged. This is WCCU Radio, Coastal Carolina, student-ran radio station. With a couple minutes here that we have left, I want to talk about, I feel like we talk about him every week. Justin Fields has officially unfollowed the Bears on Instagram. And whenever asked about if he wanted to come back with the Bears, he says, I would like to come back, but he didn't say, I just want to be a Bear. So what do you think is gonna happen here? I saw that clip of him on the, it was the St. Brown brothers, Omanra and Equinemius. And he was like, you used a mild analogy that I'm not gonna use. It just doesn't seem like he's very confident in returning to Chicago. And I guess at this point, how could you really be? Right. I do fully understand. He said he unfollowed a bunch of people on social media because he was going on vacation. Just didn't want to see football after doing it. Right. 100%. I get that. That's burnout. That's a real thing. It's not a good look, not a good choice to be public about that. You know, I feel like that's just, just delete your Instagram. And it seems like whenever, like, and I watched that podcast too, whenever they talked about it, it's like, he's like, it sounded like he's excited about like what's going to happen and stuff because that whole Bears organization has just been back and forth on trusting him. You want a team that just trusts you no matter what, you know? And I think, honestly, I think that the Bears are going to not sign him. I think he's going to get out of there, you know? I fully agree. And I think that these comments did him no justice. Right. Not only the eye of like the media, like everyone, but two GMs and people within the league, like that's not something you want to see or want to have to deal with in the future. That's just like one of those added things. It's like, I'm already doing so much trying to prepare for this or prepare for that. I don't want to worry about what you're saying on some random podcast in the middle of the office. Yeah. And again, with the Bears getting the Seahawks offensive coordinator who, and we all know with the Seahawks, they were air raid, air raid, air raid, repeat Carroll and the offensive coordinator. So who knows that the Bears are trying to go to the air raid route with getting a guy like Caleb Williams, who I personally think has a more talented arm than Justin Fields. And I think the Bears just, I think they're moving on, man. Especially with Fields, like having the new GM and like directors coming in, that's not their guy anymore. Right. They didn't hand select him like the rest of the staff did previously. That is now gone. So it's just that whole turnover and that's, I feel like the writing is probably on the wall. Yeah. And again, you can't blame Justin Fields for everything that has happened to him. You could blame a little bit on him, but he's had a back and forth coaching staff. It's looking like the Carolina Panthers at this point. It's just this guy's in. Oh yeah. He's fired, you know, and you're not helping a QB like that. Exactly. You can't learn like that. I mean, you got the weapon, you got a weapon and it seemed like the right move. DJ Moore had a great year, ninth best receiver in the league in stats. You know, this has been SportsCenter Cage. We thank you all for joining us and we'll see you next time.