The New York Football Giants would be paying Ereck Flowers $12 million if they picked up his fifth-year(2019)option. So even if things worked out with their high draft pick, they would be paying a comparable price.
Light was substantially better. Solder is a great run blocker but blah pass blocker. Solder's best days are probably the 8th-10th best in the league. Light's best are top 3.
According to this article Solder had a clause in his contract preventing the Pats from tagging him:
Agree that Light was better. I actually didn’t realize that he made 3 Pro Bowls and 1 All-Pro so not the best analogy.
Thanks for the knowledge.
Yep. He was a college tight end and first got on the field in the NFL as a wedge buster on special teams.
We all know this past season had a bizarre start for Solder, (possibly for off-field reasons). Beyond that, this statistic lacks context. How many pass-blocking plays did Solder get help vs. his linemates? Alternatively, if he was so lacking, why didn't the coaches rotate someone else over to LT?
Never change a plan as circumstances change? That doesn't sound too smart to me. The fact the the Giants had to go as far as they did to sign Solder suggests the Pats did revise plans and made a high-value offer to retain him.
OK, but Bedard is on record that the big needs are on defense, so drafting another tackle is diverting resources away from improving there.
He played LT for the Pats, yes, but ultimately lost the job to Voellmer in 2015 when Solder went down for the season.
Interesting idea, but once again giving up a limited resource to replace Solder is not improving the defense. Retaining Solder is a money matter only.
I'm not sure I follow you on the bolded. Draft capital is a limited resource but cap space isn't?
Solder would have been a massive overpay for us as his greatest strength is in run blocking while we obv rely much more on Brady throwing the ball and particular on quick hitters to negate the rush. For the Giants, IF they draft Barkley having a great run blocker like Solder could make a ton of sense. As if the norm, BB allows others to overpay while we replace without dipping into the coffers......Amendola (Edelman), Lewis (Burkhead), Solder (?).
It isn't baseball, cap space is the single most important non-player resource there is. You can sign an awful lot of defensive help with the cap space Solder is getting. I would much rather use a draft pick in the top 3 rounds on an O-lineman and have flexibility under the cap than sign Solder to the deal he got and draft an extra defender. Solder's price was high because there weren't many FA options at tackle. There are lots of FA players (or likely releases still to come) who could be impact additions to the defense at a fraction of the cost both this year and going forward.
Fair point, though it wasn't really part of Bedard's presentation.
That's admittedly murky. Cannon replaced Solder at LT, then missed games with his own injury. Voellmer stepped in during Cannon's absence, but then Cannon came back as LT briefly before they settled on Voellmer at LT and Cannon at RT. In any event, Cannon has played 34 out of his most recent 48 possible RS games.
I think this is a bit too simplistic. Solder's price was high for many reasons:
He may not have been explicit about it but I'm fairly certain Bedard is thinking along the lines of what Cellar-Door wrote above your post. Cap space and draft capital work in tandem, and both carry opportunity costs with them. Bedard likely mentioned draft picks because the FA market for LTs is pretty barren (which is partly why Solder's price went up), making it more likely that they look at drafting or trading for a new LT rather than pursuing a FA.
But Solder hasn't played even remotely like an elite LT at this keystone position for at least two years. And the idea that the Patriots have neither the ability nor a plan to address this issue with pretty much the ENTIRE off season to do so, is plainly indefensible. So probably we can take a breath and see what they do in the coming weeks, or even, say, during the SECOND DAY of free agency.
Not sure the bolded is correct. He graded quite highly the last 2 years from PFF, among others. Agree with the rest of your post, fwiw.
Pretty unfair on your part to pull my post out of the flow of the thread where it was made. It actually referred to why teams {not specifically the Pats} might pay up for a workable competent {not elite, whatever that means} LT solution that is available given the importance of the position.
It’s really strange, agreed. The Giants are nowhere close to a good team even with the additions. Eli is a mediocre at best QB, they have no running game, the defense is still highly questionable and the coaching staff unproven. Overpaying by a lot for Solder just seems a bad move for this team, but they have made a ton of them since winning their last super bowl.
How much of this was due to the LT and how much was scheme and Brady's ability to not take sacks? Those numbers seem awfully high on Solder especially in his pass protection.
Deion Branch went to Seattle and we proceeded to botch an AFC Championship game because we were throwing out Reche Caldwell as our top receiver. Also, Ty Law.
While Branch was a significant loss, they did trade him for a first round draft pick. The Seahawks roughly gave up more to acquire Branch than the Patriots gave up to acquire Cooks. The Seahawks also had to immediately sign him to what was essentially a big money free agent deal.
The Giants are locked into a $17M cap hit for his age 31 season, and a minimum $8M dead money cap hit in 2020. If he stays in 2020, they will be absorbing a cap charge of $17M due to the roster bonus.
No. Solder will get 34.8M over first two years, all guaranteed. 16M in signing bonus, 5.9 salary this season, 12.9 next year.
In general, its hard to find a significant FA loss at all. There are some name players that left, Talib, Samuel, Andruzzi, Ted Washington, Ben Watson, Woody, Welker, etc, but never did I have the feeling that any were a big loss.
