Stop It With Franklin

It’s gotta stop, guys.

I can stand it when people fart around about the guy on various Chiefs blogs around the internet. I can stand it when post after post blankets my beloved Arrowhead Addict with pro-Franklin diatribes.  But I found myself driving home from work tonight listening to NFL Radio on Sirius XM, and Gil Brandt is asked by a Chiefs fan who called about Aubrayo Franklin’s chances of landing in Kansas City.

And I thought to myself: if this crap is actually starting to permeate into my drive home from work, then I will take it upon myself to set the record straight: the Aubrayo Franklin stuff’s gotta stop. 

I’m going to make this one short and easy.

1. Aubrayo Franklin is not a good deal.  With a handful of teams likely to be entering the Aubrayo Franklin sweepstakes, and most (if not all) of these teams in need to spend, spend, spend to meet the CBA’s mandated spending minimum, Franklin is going to command serious money because he’s the only veteran nose tackle worth a darn on the market.  There are a couple UDFA nose tackles I’d endorse, but no UDFA nose tackle is going to be worth a darn in 2011.  So, Franklin is it if you’re looking for a potential franchise nose tackle.  He is not a Casey Hampton or a Jay Ratliff or a Vance Wilfork.  But that is what he will cost.

2. Nose tackles almost never perform at a high level when they change teams.  Who would you rank as the best nose tackles in the NFL?  Let’s go with Pat Kirwan’s list, since he’s legitimately brilliant: Hampton, Pouha, Ratliff, Wilfork, Kyle Williams, Franklin, Garay, Gregg, Raji, Rubin, and Soliai.  Of those 11 players, nine of them play with the team that drafted them.  The other two (Garay and Rubin) were nobodies until they landed with their current team and something clicked.  Absolutely zero of them switched to their current team when they were awesome.

Fire your missives at me in comments, and we’ll take it from there.