It tells me they have a plan in motion.
I would say that in the hours between PikeBadger's post, and RicFLair's post, it not only became clear that Gute had/(has) a plan, but began to become apparent what that plan is.
Can't wait to see the rest of it unfold.
I aso can't wait until the interviews this summer, when journalists ask Gutekunst things like, "at what point did you first decide to target "McKinney/Jacobs", and "what preparations did you make with your roster and salary cap in order to make it possible to cut those deals at the moment they had to be made", and "if 'X' other team had swooped in and signed one or the other before you could make the deal, what would have been your backup plan", etc.
"Who was actually negotiating the deals, and under what guidelines"? Because they happened so close together, it seems unlikely Gutekunst or even Brandt were negotiating them alone - whoever closed McKinney may not have been the same one who closed Jacobs, because it would have been hard to get off the phone quickly enough with Jacobs before the McKinney deal was half done.
So if the negotiations
were simultaneous, how was this delegated - who led which call? How much of it was framed out in advance, how much latitude did the men on the phones have in the split-second heat of the moment? Obviously they had a predrafted template, how much were they able to deviate before the team moved on to the next player on the list of targets? What other agents were calling and trying to get through while the deals were being made?
If either deal had fallen through, who were the next calls to make? And would that have affected the terms of the other deal that was probably being made simultaneously; freed up more cap, etc?
Because this was a really complicated, high-stakes, pressure-packed project, with decisions that would deeply affect the entire team for many years, and possibly mean the difference between a Super Bowl and an 11-6 "one and done". And it looks they mastered it maginficently. I'd be fascinated to know as much as possible about how it was all schemed out, and how it was actually executed. Maybe they had something even more impactful in mind, and this actually was the "Plan B" fallback option.
Another thing I'd love to know (but they'd never in a million years admit it) is how many of the details of those two contracts were already printed up and on the desks of the agents before the calls were even made. But of course, there's no way anyone who knows is going to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. I sure woud be curious, though.
