Steelers acquire TE Vance McDonald in trade with 49ers
August 30, 2017 by admin
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The San Francisco 49ers have traded tight end Vance McDonald and a fifth-round pick in next year’s draft to the Pittsburgh Steelers in exchange for a fourth-round pick, the teams announced Tuesday.
McDonald, who signed a three-year, $19.7 million contract extension with the Niners in December, had career highs in receiving yards (391), yards per reception (16.29) and touchdowns (four) in 11 games last season before suffering a shoulder injury.
Vance McDonald trade opens door for rookie TE George Kittle
The 49ers keep adding to their stash of 2018 draft picks, and the latest trade clears a path for rookie TE George Kittle to make an early impact.
The acquisition reinforces the Steelers’ need for playmaking at tight end since Heath Miller retired in 2016. Last year’s experiment with Ladarius Green didn’t pan out. Jesse James and Xavier Grimble, despite showing flashes, were inconsistent catching passes in training camp.
Ben Roethlisberger likes to target tight ends in scoring range, particularly on back-shoulder throws in the back of the end zone. McDonald, with seven touchdown catches since 2015, should be able to help.
Coach Mike Tomlin, who recalls liking McDonald’s skill set coming out of Rice in 2013, has made clear his tight end crop needed an infusion of competition.
“The guys hadn’t been consistently varsity enough for our comfort,” Tomlin said of his rotation through the first three weeks of preseason games. “It’s as black and white as that. They’ve had some moments positively and had some moments negatively. We were in the market for a guy who was NFL capable. McDonald is that.
“We’re not going to anoint him in any way. We’re going to put him in uniform like the rest of them and continue to allow them to sort themselves out. It’s reasonable to expect the guys that are here to respond positively in the right way to his presence and elevate their play.”
The Steelers have carried three or four tight ends in past years, so it’s possible James, Grimble and veteran blocker David Johnson will battle for two spots.
On the business side, McDonald’s contract won’t handcuff the Steelers, who will take a $4.162 million cap hit in 2017 but can escape the contract next year if willing to accept $4.2 million in dead money.
The Steelers haven’t had much success with recent trades and hope this one plays out differently. The Steelers gave up late-round picks to acquire a pair of cornerbacks, Brandon Boykin in 2015 and Justin Gilbert in 2016. Neither player became a long-term factor for the defense.
The Niners first began shopping McDonald during draft weekend, something coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch acknowledged at the time. Unable to find a trade partner, the 49ers held on to McDonald, and he spent most of training camp working with the starting offense.
But the Niners have been particularly pleased with rookie George Kittle, whom they drafted in the fifth round this year. Kittle’s ability to block and run routes has him poised for a big role and made McDonald expendable.
In trading McDonald, the 49ers will have to shoulder the leftover weight of a lucrative contract extension he signed with the team late last season under former general manager Trent Baalke. The Niners must absorb the remaining portion of McDonald’s $7 million signing bonus on this year’s salary cap, which isn’t a problem because they’ve got the most cap space in the league.
A second-round pick in 2013, McDonald had issues with injuries and drops during his tenure with the 49ers. He missed 16 games over four seasons, and his 15.8 drop percentage was worst among tight ends with at least 75 catchable targets since 2013, according to Pro Football Focus.
McDonald had 64 catches for 866 yards and seven touchdowns in his four years with the team.
“We would like to thank Vance for his contributions to this organization on the field and in the community over the last four seasons,” Lynch said in a statement. “Although I have only known Vance for a short time, I quickly learned that he and his wife, Kendi, have been tremendous representatives for the team in the community and their service to others is quite commendable. We wish the McDonald family all the best as they move on to a new opportunity in Pittsburgh.”
With McDonald on the way out, the Niners now figure to keep Kittle along with veterans Logan Paulsen and Garrett Celek, though Blake Bell and rookie Cole Hikutini also remain in the mix.
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‘Game of Thrones’ Director on Jon Snow’s Past and Tyrion’s Reaction
August 30, 2017 by admin
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When Jon and Dany hook up, we know it’s incest, but they don’t. So why does Tyrion look troubled? Why the reaction shot from him?
From my point of view, Tyrion always seemed three steps ahead. As long as there is a professional alliance between Dany and Jon, that’s something that everybody wants. We can imagine that that’s a helpful alliance. But when things get personal, then people make decisions based on their emotions, and that can complicate matters going forward, so I think he sees the potential here for things to get very messy. Usually, historically, nothing good comes out of relationships becoming more complicated! [Laughs] It’s also a question of what’s going to be his role within this new alliance, right? So there’s a kind of caution here.
Some folks suspect he might be jealous, too.
Well, there is something to that. Everyone seems to be in love with Dany, in a way, and I think Tyrion’s a little bit in love with her. But I don’t think it’s an actual romantic love. There’s a huge respect for her, and maybe there’s a slight romantic element to that, but it’s more of a jockeying in terms of who has real power. Not over Dany, but who has power in a relationship with Dany. Jorah, who really is in love with her, his relationship with Jon is complicated in a different way. With Tyrion, it’s all about who is going to have sway over her?
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Tyrion’s bigger moment, of course, is his reunion with Cersei. Peter Dinklage and Lena Headey haven’t been in a scene together since season four.
That was one of my favorite scenes of the entire show. My favorite scene to watch, my favorite scene to shoot. It was very important to us that we let the audience believe, for at least a moment, that she could really kill him. That this might be it. The first time Peter rehearsed it, I was like, I believed it. [Laughs] That was definitely one of those scenes where I had a chill.
Cersei shows remarkable restraint. She would kill Tyrion, except then her double-cross wouldn’t work on the rest of them. So Lena is actually playing the scene to work on both levels.
That’s one of the great things about Lena [Headey.] She is one of those actresses who, within her stillness, there is everything. She can do so little, and still have all that complexity. Particularly during the summit at the Dragonpit, she’s able to convey so much without outwardly showing very much. It’s all in there. It’s all in the eyes. And the slight little things she does are incredibly telling. She is a very intuitive and very transparent actress.
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HBO
As showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss point out in a behind-the-scenes video, it was really easy for them to type the words, “And then the Wall comes tumbling down.” It’s much harder to pull that off. What was the trickiest part of that shocking sequence?
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Everything was tricky about that one. That was one of the more complicated visual effects that I’ve ever done. It was a huge amount of conceptualizing, just to figure out how the scenes should track, and then the execution was very complicated. We had to decide how much of it was going to be real, and how much of it was going to be visual effects.
One of the things that was very helpful was we had these concept artists who did these paintings, about ten paintings, of the sequences in the script, that were very suggestive of what the sequence would feel like and look like. That was really helpful to figure what the flames should look like, what color they should be, what the dead dragon should look like, what the different interactive effects should be like. The top of the Wall is a set in Belfast, and the rest is all in virtual land, and it’s a complicated thing to marry all these things together.
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There’s also this sense of anticipation from the wights. We used to see as just mindless zombies in thrall to their White Walker masters, just a slave army, and then we get a glimpse that they might actually know or understand what is happening here.
Yes. Exactly. That was an important thing for me, too, that you feel like there’s kind of a consciousness there. And I think there certainly is a sense that for an enemy to be a proper enemy, they have to have a certain kind of intelligence. That makes it a real fight, as opposed to a fight with something that doesn’t have the wherewithal to be a proper opponent.
Please tell me that Tormund and Beric were not on the chunk of the Wall that fell?
Tormund has a lot of fans, but I can tell you nothing.
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