NFL Free Agent Frenzy
- Thread starter RedOctober3829
- Start date
It only works so long as the player sticks with the team, so yes... they can keep kicking the grenade down the road, but it eventually goes off. It also limits the number of people you can spread teh wealth around to as it gets increasingly tied up into dead money that builds and builds.
Does the grenade go off though? When the bill comes due, it seems like you pay it by moving money around and pushing other bills into the future.
I think what really happens is you start bleeding talent at the edges, like the Saints have , you get stuck with guys who are in decline because you can't cut them, and your performance starts to tail as you have guys on big money with big names, but no longer big production.
Edit- for example if the Patriots had used that approach they'd probably have Hightower for another year or two on a big number, instead of cycling guys like KVN or Collins out when they got expensive and then pouncing on them for cheap when they declined, they'd have them at the big numbers that other teams paid them, etc.
Yes it goes off though.. as once Brady left you can't transfer his dead cap hit to someone else. Or Brees so depending how much you kept pushing the grenade down the road. The larger that individual grenade gets, but also all the other grenades you have also been pushing keep getting larger and larger too. So yes it does go off. It can be mitigated if you get lucky, managed well and can manage when they go off, but you can also get screwed if you don't plan well and if the Cap doesn't go up enough to allow you to keep pushing. So it erodes at the edges what talent you can sign in free agency and what you can pay your own free agents.
And you have to hope all your high priced superstars stay healthy. Or you are stuck with running with the cheap talent, and hoping you get lucky with those guys.
Jerrah hasn’t won since Jimmy J but has had teams that had enough talent to. They just collapsed. Those guys haven’t fielded a single team that has so much as sniffed a postseason run.
Yeah, by ASAP I meant as soon as they reasonably can, which may be after some more dominoes drop.
But they can get someone to provide comparable value to a disgruntled Baker for less than $18.9m. Jameis? Minshew? Idk.
Minor correction, Switzer was the coach of the SB30 winning team, but that was a pretty stacked team with the Jimmy Johnson core plus Prime Time, so basically you could credit JJ for a big part of that, all Switzer had to do was not step on his own toes (ala 1994 NFC Championship) and he would have had 2 rings. But fuck Jerrah and his organization.
Is it a little weird that the Falcons are in on Watson and Matt Ryan is apparently ok with it?
View: https://twitter.com/profootballtalk/status/1504621889309847554?s=21
Lest we forget; this team had a chance to grab a QB in last year’s draft and chose a (admittedly good) TE instead.
View: https://twitter.com/profootballtalk/status/1504621889309847554?s=21
Lest we forget; this team had a chance to grab a QB in last year’s draft and chose a (admittedly good) TE instead.
Probably a case of knowing that if they do get Watson by pushing the date it makes it easier to trade him to somewhere he wants to go.
I think Matty Ice has a few good years left. Would love to see him succeed (anywhere but Pitt). What are his realistic landing spots? NO? Sea? Cle if they move Baker?
Unless you think the players are being bamboozled in the money they are getting, eventually it comes due.
I should have been clearer, as I feel the same about Switzer.
I suppose there's a number of ways for a presence like Jerrah to mess up a team, besides talent shortfalls. He regularly seems to be doing or saying just the wrong thing at just the wrong time. But, if there's a scale, he is defintely less shitty than Haslam or Snyder. Unlike those two, he does have some football acumen.
The Raiders being the target for that comment was weird anyway... they had a ton of cap space, they signed 1 fairly big FA in Jones (but even his deal isn't that big), and traded for Adams, they SHOULD still have money left, their whole roster was built for this to be a big splash offseason. Before the Adams deal they have only 2 players on the team with cap hits over $10M, and NONE over $20M.
I keep seeing this, but then I try to figure out how the Falcons exist as a football team in 2022-23 with a $55M dead money cap hit for sending away Ryan, and then account for Watson's huge base salary ($35M). Watson could surely sign a new contract to make his hit much more reasonable, but that $55M is just insane. Philly struggled mightily with their roster last year after taking a $33M cap for the Wentz trade, offsetting that by starting a rookie QB with a 1.5M salary. The Pats could do the same after a tough 2020 thanks to Mac. Would Watson make his base salary rookie-level? Even then, ATL would have to shed more than they already have.
Not to mention the picks ATL will have to give up to get Watson will mean they can't really build through the draft while Watson is on the team for a few years and they have roughly zero receivers for Watson to throw to in ATL besides Pitts. They could trade for Watson and still be a bottom 5 team and miss out on a franchise QB in next years loaded draft class.
Shanahan in SF would be a great fit but the Niners run the risk of burning through Lance's rookie contract if Ryan plays well for more than a year.
Matt Ryan's dead money cap hit would be $40.5M (so they actually save money, about $8M), the $55M was based on his restructure, but that was never actually finalized. So they pushed back his roster bonus, they trade him, he gets to INDY and gets an extension.
So a trade like that would mean the Falcons are taking on whatever Watson's base ends up being, minus about $8M. They have about $5M in cap space now.
Add in that money will likely go to HOU in the Watson deal, and players may come back from IND, plus Jarrett, Matthews and Jones all have deals that can be extended/re-structured to open space and it isn't crazy.
Much thanks for the explanation. OTC had the $55.5M figure the other day, but they've since corrected down to the $40.5M figure you cited. It'll still be hilarious if Watson comes aboard, and then is suspended for 6 games, but this does explain the feasibility of the trade at least.
Also, if the (hopefully) forthcoming Watson suspension is for 8+ games, it might make sense to keep both of them.
Agreed with all of this. People seem to think there is one "bill that comes due," but cap expenditures are a series of smaller bills that come due at different times. The Saints are stuck with the bad back end of decisions they made 3-4 years ago and thus their heavily-backloaded current deals aren't providing as much surplus value, they're just counterweighting value deficits.
Raiders have a ton of 2022 cap space, too. I don't really like the Adams move for them given his age, the leverage they had, and how much draft capital it's costing, but his contract isn't going to kill them.
Chiefs getting JuJu. He'll be hugely helpful there.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/33538762/kansas-city-chiefs-juju-smith-schuster-reach-one-year-deal-source-says
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/33538762/kansas-city-chiefs-juju-smith-schuster-reach-one-year-deal-source-says
DJ Moore got a 3 year $61.9m extension.
View: https://mobile.twitter.com/DNewtonespn/status/1504915649910431744?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
View: https://mobile.twitter.com/DNewtonespn/status/1504915649910431744?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/2022-nfl-free-agency-tracker-updates-on-where-the-top-100-free-agents-are-signing/
Top FAs left:
OT Armstead (NO)
CB Gilmore (Car)
LB Wagner (Sea)
S Mathieu (KC)
OT Brown (NE)
DL Hicks (Chi)
DE Clowney (Cle)
OT Brown (Sea)
TE Gronk (TB)
OL Bozeman (Bal)
WR Beckham (LAR)
DE Barnett (Phi)
DE Ingram (KC)
WR Valdes-Scantling (GB)
QB Winston (NO)
CB Jackson (Car)
CB Peterson (Min)
RB Fournette (TB)
RB/WR Patterson (Atl)
OT Fisher (Ind)
S Jackson (Den)
S Tartt (SF)
DE Hughes (Buf)
Plus Fletcher Cox is available. I don't know for certain if this list is fully up to date, but there's a lot of pretty good players still out there.
Top FAs left:
OT Armstead (NO)
CB Gilmore (Car)
LB Wagner (Sea)
S Mathieu (KC)
OT Brown (NE)
DL Hicks (Chi)
DE Clowney (Cle)
OT Brown (Sea)
TE Gronk (TB)
OL Bozeman (Bal)
WR Beckham (LAR)
DE Barnett (Phi)
DE Ingram (KC)
WR Valdes-Scantling (GB)
QB Winston (NO)
CB Jackson (Car)
CB Peterson (Min)
RB Fournette (TB)
RB/WR Patterson (Atl)
OT Fisher (Ind)
S Jackson (Den)
S Tartt (SF)
DE Hughes (Buf)
Plus Fletcher Cox is available. I don't know for certain if this list is fully up to date, but there's a lot of pretty good players still out there.
Do all these deals for wideouts imply that the Agholor deal was not an overpay? Or at least will not be going forward?
He never was. His deal was perfectly reasonable for a guy with 1 good season as a legit deep threat and a bunch of okay ones as a 2nd/3rd wideout.
Top 4 cap hits on the team
Judon 16.5
Henry 15.0
Agholor 14.9
Smith 13.7
I would think Agholor and Smith are overpaid. Are there teams that would trade for those guys and their contracts and provide value In return?
Judon 16.5
Henry 15.0
Agholor 14.9
Smith 13.7
I would think Agholor and Smith are overpaid. Are there teams that would trade for those guys and their contracts and provide value In return?
I mean with Agholor that's just accounting, but if you want to do that, then he got paid $7M last year, and his production was fine for the money.
I'd say Smith had a disappointing year for what he got paid, Agholor was maybe moderately disappointing given his contract, but at the same time some of that was just targets, he gets the kind of targets he has in the past he probably puts up 700-900 yards and 5-7 TDs, which ranges from as expected to very good for 11M AAV on a short years deal.
I would also think some of Agholor‘s lack of targets had something to do with Mac not doing a lot of deep reads as a rookie learning the system (IIRC, he had Mac’s first TD pass and then … not a lot else). It wouldn’t surprise me to see Agholor be more of a target this year with Mac up to speed and stretching the playbook a bit.
yeah I think at some point in one of the many threads we went through it and early in the year Mac was just missing badly on deep balls with Agholor open, some of it was the line being rough, some of it was bad reads, some was just not getting enough on the ball due to bad footwork.
I will say, I don't think Agholor is a real #1 WR, he's a field stretching specialist. If we brought in someone who would take the other team's attention it would help him a lot. He drew a lot of doubles last year which he isn't going to beat, at that point his biggest contribution is taking 2 guys deep so Bourne and Meyers got more room to work 1v1.
Edit- a Julio Jones or OBJ would be huge, in that when healthy they're going to get the defensive attention giving our quick guys underneath more opportunity, and giving Agholor the chance to beat more CBs without a safety shading over which means more big plays (like he had in LV)
Dallas has played in 0 NFC Championship games since 1996. They also have a total of 3 playoff wins in that time span. One playoff win every 9 years.
They are a joke. They have been terrible for a while now. They excel in one thing and one thing only, hype.
View: https://twitter.com/AroundTheNFL/status/1505330253564035080
Technically a trade, but whatever.
Woods to TEN for a 6th rounder next year
Technically a trade, but whatever.
Woods to TEN for a 6th rounder next year
“Shit, we missed out on Watson. Let‘s give a lot of money to the other sex criminal.”
