NEW YORK — There was a moment last Tuesday, somewhere between the wagyu course and the fourth speech about pediatric research, when Jimmy Haslam turned to me and said that loyalty is a depreciating asset that front offices must learn to write off before it metastasizes. That is when I knew that Ben Solak's ten bold predictions for the upcoming NFL season, which he published at The Ringer, were not just naive but structurally disrespectful to the men who have to sign the checks. I am here to set the record straight.
Haslam made his feelings on Myles Garrett abundantly clear as the butterscotch budino arrived. He reportedly told me that Garrett's projected twenty sacks are not a triumph of individual will but a classic market inefficiency: every quarterback takedown is simply another zero tacked onto the asking price of a player whose contract, a five-year, $125 million deal signed back in 2020, has already begun to rot. The bold prediction, Haslam explained with a gesture of his dessert spoon, is not whether Garrett will terrorize the AFC North again, but whether the Browns will finally have the courage to ship him to a contender for a bundle of future capital that can be responsibly squandered on cheaper, less charismatic replacements.
The following afternoon, I toured the Houston Texans facility with a senior adviser who made it clear that C.J. Stroud is succeeding precisely because he has not yet been corrupted by the idea that he is bigger than the institution. Cal McNair has built a roster that knows its place: a collection of affordable talent and veterans on prove-it deals who understand that winning the AFC is not about highlight reels but about exhausting the opponent through institutional patience. Stefon Diggs is in Houston precisely because Buffalo exhausted his right to express dissatisfaction, and McNair was smart enough to acquire him on a contract that expires before Diggs can learn the mayor's name. If the Texans take the conference, it will be because Nick Caserio and DeMeco Ryans finally stopped trying to entertain the analytics bloggers and started trying to outlast them.
Solak wonders whether two big-name players might get dealt this season. With all due respect to my colleague, two is a rounding error. I have heard from an NFC North team president that his franchise has already drawn up contingency plans to trade its leading rusher if he asks for a renegotiation before the bye week, and I respect the clarity. The correct number is whatever it takes to remind the remaining rosters that employment is a privilege, not a bargaining position.
The modern player wants to be the destination, but the modern franchise needs to be the departure lounge. You cannot build a culture of obedience when you are constantly apologizing for a player's production.
Back in my day, a fifteen-sack season meant you got a pat on the helmet and a coupon for free tires, not a quarter-billion in fully guaranteed money. We understood that the shield was not a vehicle for individual expression; it was a brand that needed to be protected from the very people who wore it. We have allowed an entire generation of athletes to believe that accumulating statistics is the same as accumulating leverage, and that is a failure of parenting.
This is why the NFL keeps expanding the postseason and parceling out Thursday nights to Amazon, not because the fans demand it, but because the owners need more revenue to offset the catastrophic miscalculation of paying young men what the market says they are worth. A source at 345 Park Avenue told me that the new kickoff rule was specifically designed to increase the number of anonymous special-teamers on active rosters, thereby diluting the bargaining power of name-brand talent. I cannot confirm this, but I admire the thinking.
The genius of the modern rebuild is not in identifying stars; it is in trading them before their second contract. I sat on a panel at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in March and watched a hedge-fund manager explain with a straight face that draft picks are just options on rookie wage-scale labor, and I realized we are finally speaking the same language. A first-round pick costs less over four years than most veteran backup quarterbacks make in a single season, which means the true bold prediction is not whether Houston wins the AFC, but whether they will have the discipline to trade C.J. Stroud the moment his rookie deal expires.
I was reminded of this last winter in Mobile, where I spent three mornings at the Senior Bowl breakfast buffet listening to scouts complain that college players now arrive with too much film. The horror. What they meant is that the players arrive with too much proof, too much data for the market to undervalue them. I have said it before and I will say it again: the combine exists so that teams can ignore what a player did on Saturdays and pay him based on what he did in an underwear race on a Tuesday morning.
Solak and his ilk keep calling these moves bold, as if trading a proven commodity for a lottery ticket is some kind of psychic feat. I call it Monday. I have been in enough league offices to know that the only metric that matters is owner net satisfaction, and the fastest way to achieve that is to ensure that no single player earns enough to make the owner remember his name. If the Houston Texans win the AFC this season, it will not be because they acquired boldness. It will be because they acquired enough draft capital to ensure that their quarterback remains underpaid and grateful through the conference championship.
My own bold prediction is that by Week 8, at least three Pro Bowl defenders will be learning new ZIP codes, Myles Garrett will have eight sacks and a one-way ticket out of Cleveland, and the Texans will be sitting at 6-2 not because they have the best players, but because they have the most compliant ones. I have already booked my flight to the Super Bowl, and I am told the owners' suite has a very clear view of the field. From up there, every player looks the same size, and that is exactly how the league intended it.