The 2017 Free Agency GM Armchair Challenge Winner

Free agency was fast and furious, with money being thrown at anyone who has played offensive line at a semi-competent level in the NFL, while other teams were busy finding bargains at positions such as RB and TE.

In any case, despite all of the time us "experts" here at Field Gulls spend ruminating on everything Seahawks, salary cap and football related, the winner of the Free Agency Armchair GM Challenge is a lurker who joined the site this afternoon after I notified him that he was the winner.

Huh.

(The original post can be found here.)

Not sure how I should feel about that. When I stumbled upon Field Gulls years ago I was elated because I had never before seen a football site that combined solid, in-depth film study and analytics, with a robust comments section filled with intelligent, literate internet users who furthered the discussion, rather than using the comment section to call each other names or make momma jokes. Well, now it turns out there seems to be a bunch of freeloaders who are simply lurking, stealing all the knowledge we provide them and then when there's a contest such as an Armchair GM Challenge, they swoop in, drop off a barrel of knowledge and walk away with a $100 gift card that should have gone to one of us regulars.

For a minute I actually considered whether it was possible that we aren't all as smart as we think we are when it comes to football, but that's ludicrous, so I dismissed that idea nearly as soon as it popped into my head. I mean, outside of the Hawks front office, where else could there be smarter people sitting down to look at football and analyze things than here? Surely not down at Niners Nation, and it would be nearly impossible for there to be any kind of intelligent analysis going on at ROTB since there isn't any actual discussion going on there since Carson Palmer pulled his kids out of school, effectively robbing ROTB of all its commenters not named Devildoc.

In any case, it's always good to know there are a lot of intelligent lurkers (maybe they're more intelligent than us by virtue of the fact that they lurk instead of embarrass themselves in a public forum). However, for any of those lurkers who have been keeping to themselves even though you may have some insight and thoughts to share with the rest of us, please, don't be intimidated. We love new members and are always happy when we can get a crop of new contributors with intelligent things to contribute. For example, it was about this time of year a couple of years ago some random nobody popped out of the woodwork and was probably the most intelligent commenter this site - and possibly even the entire internet - has ever seen. His name was rollsuphill, and I'm not sure whatever happened to him, but man did he ever write some of the best comments ever recorded in the history of internet commenting. Thus, as we await word of the addition of young talent to the Hawks in the coming days, it would be great if Field Gulls could add some young (or old, we don't discriminate) talent as well, whether it's in the form of new commenters or new fanpost authors. With the lull of the summer doldrums just around the corner, we're going to need everybody to help us make it through to training camp.

However, back to the matter at hand, without further delay, here are the final standings for the Free Agency Armchair GM Challenge.

Congratulations again to the winner, and to all those who took time to participate as well.