Signings, Cuts, Trades

[rossihunter2]

We’re trying to win a super bowl, and win it THIS YEAR. Eric wants to build for the long haul, but I promise you, there is not a single person in the castle that would take 5 years of playoffs and falling short, over 1 super bowl, and I believe Eric decosta and his cap guys are more creative and outside the box than you are. Our FO was so creative they literally made the league intervene and shut down a blockbuster trade last year, which was absolute bullshit but I digress.

if a FO wants a player, they will make it happen. The chiefs, ravens, and saints have mad scientists in the FO when it comes to cap and trades. And the ravens absolutely want Julio, they would be foolish to not seriously pursue this. It’s possible that they push very hard and just don’t win the sweepstakes in the end, but to imply that the cap implications are too severe and the ravens are gonna just poke and prod for a minute and then back out, well that just doesn’t make sense, Eric decosta has been extremely aggressive and you just keep ignoring that aspect. This is not ozzies ravens, between round 1 and the trade deadline, Eric decosta is a straight up gangster.

in terms of the cap, it's notable that we haven't had to be super creative to get people under the cap this year - so there is plenty of facility to push money into the future if we need to without being crazy about it (or at least no worse off than the vast majority of the league in 2022)

 

[rmcjacket23]

We’re trying to win a super bowl, and win it THIS YEAR. Eric wants to build for the long haul, but I promise you, there is not a single person in the castle that would take 5 years of playoffs and falling short, over 1 super bowl, and I believe Eric decosta and his cap guys are more creative and outside the box than you are. Our FO was so creative they literally made the league intervene and shut down a blockbuster trade last year, which was absolute bullshit but I digress.

if a FO wants a player, they will make it happen. The chiefs, ravens, and saints have mad scientists in the FO when it comes to cap and trades. And the ravens absolutely want Julio, they would be foolish to not seriously pursue this. It’s possible that they push very hard and just don’t win the sweepstakes in the end, but to imply that the cap implications are too severe and the ravens are gonna just poke and prod for a minute and then back out, well that just doesn’t make sense, Eric decosta has been extremely aggressive and you just keep ignoring that aspect. This is not ozzies ravens, between round 1 and the trade deadline, Eric decosta is a straight up gangster.

I have yet to see DeCosta be aggressive when it comes to salary cap. In terms of cap management, DeCosta would probably be the more "conservative" of the two when compared to Ozzie. Ozzie had no issue backloading a bunch of pretty large contracts to put a better football team out there in the short run. Eric has largely stayed clear of this, preferring a much more straight-lined approach. It's never going to be perfectly straight-lined, and 2021 threw a wrench into that with the down cap year, but in general, DeCosta has much more practical and conservative with cap management than Ozzie or others around the league have. He could have backloaded the crap out of Stanley and Marlon's deal, but he really didn't. He could have waited longer to sign most of these guys to extensions, but he didn't. Both of those things would have signaled a much more "we have to win now" mentality.

I agree he's more aggressive in pursuit of FAs and trades than Ozzie was. But from a cap management standpoint, I'm not seeing examples of that. I'm not seeing him doing crazy contracts with tons of roster bonuses and option years, and I'm certainly not seeing him do the new trend of "void years", which will be something a lot of teams will be complaining about in the future when that payment comes due.

So I think we need to be careful on how we label people as "aggressive". In certain ways yes, in other ways no.

All of this is rather moot to me though. Pretty much any analyst you can find has told you Julio isn't getting traded until June. If he is, it would be a huge surprise, and it would probably achieve very little of the things Atlanta wants to do (namely, create cap space). If the Ravens get a WR early this weekend, I think that will largely close the book on Julio to Baltimore. It just won't make sense at all from a roster construction standpoint. If the Ravens come out of the weekend with very little, it'll open the door a bit, but again, we are almost certainly talking June at this point.

 

[rossihunter2]

Sorry for the sort of spammy plugs but i promise it's the last one...

For those in any way inclined to fill out the WR consensus spreadsheet to add their rankings, you've got about 24 hours left

we've got enough now to get results but the more the merrier...
so if anyone's got any WR ranking opinions then feel free to add your name and rankings to the list:

2021 WR Consensus Spreadsheet

you don't need to fill in 15 if you haven't got 15 - just do as many as you can - and maybe we can make/break a couple of ties

 

[rmcjacket23]

in terms of the cap, it's notable that we haven't had to be super creative to get people under the cap this year - so there is plenty of facility to push money into the future if we need to without being crazy about it (or at least no worse off than the vast majority of the league in 2022)

True, but its also notable that we don't really have many avenues to create a lot of space with contract restructures. There's a lot of deals that just simply can't be touched at this point, which is why the Ravens haven't done much, other than the cuts with Campbell and Williams. Partially because they haven't needed it, but also there's not nearly as much wiggle room.

RSR's cap guy has the breakdown of the restructures we could do to create space. Would free up ~$10M if you do that for everybody who you basically could do it with. Stanley being the most notable and $.

The other two low hanging fruits that we're not considering is:
a) how serious are we about an extension with Lamar. If we're really serious about it, there's no math or contract structure possible that will get you an extension with a similar current year cap hit. It's a $3M cap hit currently. It would take a miracle to keep that like under $10M for the year, which would be half the cap space you have left.
b) nobody has any idea what's going with the ET situation, and its entirely possible we'll end up with a bigger cap hit for him if we lose whatever grievance was filed. The current dead money hit is just for prorated bonuses. It doesn't account for whatever we may lose (or win) in a grievance.

 

[rossihunter2]

b) nobody has any idea what's going with the ET situation, and its entirely possible we'll end up with a bigger cap hit for him if we lose whatever grievance was filed. The current dead money hit is just for prorated bonuses. It doesn't account for whatever we may lose (or win) in a grievance.

for what it's worth - all indicators seem to suggest that the grievance won't be resolved until after the 2021 season

 

[Simba]

In regards to the cap in a potential Julio trade, it's absolute doable, but there are consequences.

1. We do still have Ronnie Stanley who would be an easy restructure if we needed to make room this year. You probably hope you can work something out with Julio as well to lower the number a tad, but it's doable either way.

2. However, acquiring Julio probably puts you out of the running for a quality veteran edge and Villanueva. You could probably still lure Dennis Kelly for cheap. The good thing though is that you could conceivably put WR off in the draft and focus the picks on the trenches in a perfect world.

3. The long term ramifications are where you really have to start considering if it's worth it. We have a large impending FA class next year. Of course, some are already likely to move on, but you have Lamar, Andrews, Ricard, Bozeman, Watkins, Jimmy, Gus, BWill, Calais, DeShon, Averett, etc. Now, you probably still keep Lamar and Andrews, but start sacrificing guys like Bozeman. And that's not the worst thing if you can devote this draft to hitting the trenches instead of skill positions.

4. He's 32 and has been injured quite a bit. It sounds good but how much does he have left? You're probably still getting a good year or two but how much is that worth?

 

[JoeyFlex5]

I have yet to see DeCosta be aggressive when it comes to salary cap. In terms of cap management, DeCosta would probably be the more "conservative" of the two when compared to Ozzie. Ozzie had no issue backloading a bunch of pretty large contracts to put a better football team out there in the short run. Eric has largely stayed clear of this, preferring a much more straight-lined approach. It's never going to be perfectly straight-lined, and 2021 threw a wrench into that with the down cap year, but in general, DeCosta has much more practical and conservative with cap management than Ozzie or others around the league have. He could have backloaded the crap out of Stanley and Marlon's deal, but he really didn't. He could have waited longer to sign most of these guys to extensions, but he didn't. Both of those things would have signaled a much more "we have to win now" mentality.

I agree he's more aggressive in pursuit of FAs and trades than Ozzie was. But from a cap management standpoint, I'm not seeing examples of that. I'm not seeing him doing crazy contracts with tons of roster bonuses and option years, and I'm certainly not seeing him do the new trend of "void years", which will be something a lot of teams will be complaining about in the future when that payment comes due.

So I think we need to be careful on how we label people as "aggressive". In certain ways yes, in other ways no.

All of this is rather moot to me though. Pretty much any analyst you can find has told you Julio isn't getting traded until June. If he is, it would be a huge surprise, and it would probably achieve very little of the things Atlanta wants to do (namely, create cap space). If the Ravens get a WR early this weekend, I think that will largely close the book on Julio to Baltimore. It just won't make sense at all from a roster construction standpoint. If the Ravens come out of the weekend with very little, it'll open the door a bit, but again, we are almost certainly talking June at this point.

I never once speculated he would be traded before June, ftr.

and one example of being aggressive with cap management and trades would be what he worked out to get clowney last year, that was super aggressive and super creative.

 

[rossihunter2]

In regards to the cap in a potential Julio trade, it's absolute doable, but there are consequences.

1. We do still have Ronnie Stanley who would be an easy restructure if we needed to make room this year. You probably hope you can work something out with Julio as well to lower the number a tad, but it's doable either way.

2. However, acquiring Julio probably puts you out of the running for a quality veteran edge and Villanueva. You could probably still lure Dennis Kelly for cheap. The good thing though is that you could conceivably put WR off in the draft and focus the picks on the trenches in a perfect world.

3. The long term ramifications are where you really have to start considering if it's worth it. We have a large impending FA class next year. Of course, some are already likely to move on, but you have Lamar, Andrews, Ricard, Bozeman, Watkins, Jimmy, Gus, BWill, Calais, DeShon, Averett, etc. Now, you probably still keep Lamar and Andrews, but start sacrificing guys like Bozeman. And that's not the worst thing if you can devote this draft to hitting the trenches instead of skill positions.

4. He's 32 and has been injured quite a bit. It sounds good but how much does he have left? You're probably still getting a good year or two but how much is that worth?

the other thing to consider is that you're giving up draft picks in 2022 when you're probably very likely to need them

 

[Simba]

the other thing to consider is that you're giving up draft picks in 2022 when you're probably very likely to need them

Definitely a risk vs. reward situation. In a way, you could argue that as a reason to make the trade. Like, whatever WR you take in this draft or next... what are the chances they give you the equivalent over their rookie contract to what Julio gives in 2-3 years? You could absolutely make the argument that Julio has more value if you're open to projecting that way. And I know the analytics based-FO is probably considering the same thing.

 

[rossihunter2]

Definitely a risk vs. reward situation. In a way, you could argue that as a reason to make the trade. Like, whatever WR you take in this draft or next... what are the chances they give you the equivalent over their rookie contract to what Julio gives in 2-3 years? You could absolutely make the argument that Julio has more value if you're open to projecting that way. And I know the analytics based-FO is probably considering the same thing.

i think of it less in terms of that position specifically but more the fact that we will have to get cheaper in certain areas in 2022 by necessity because we likely got more expensive at other positions (including a massive deal for Lamar)

and the best way to acquire cheap talent is with draft picks with the rookie wage scale

if you trade for julio, you both lose cap space to spend elsewhere (which tbh isn't that big of a deal when he's costing us a lot less than comparable receivers) but more importantly you lose the draft capital to add young talent at other positions

 

[Simba]

i think of it less in terms of that position specifically but more the fact that we will have to get cheaper in certain areas in 2022 by necessity because we likely got more expensive at other positions (including a massive deal for Lamar)

and the best way to acquire cheap talent is with draft picks with the rookie wage scale

if you trade for julio, you both lose cap space to spend elsewhere (which tbh isn't that big of a deal when he's costing us a lot less than comparable receivers) but more importantly you lose the draft capital to add young talent at other positions

Oh I totally get that as well. My argument is coming more from the side of if you acquire Julio, you're much less likely to be picking WR high this year at least. So if you use that pick that you would have used toward an asset at another position for the future, you can justify moving that pick a little easier. I am very aware that's much easier said than done though.

I would say that regardless of position though, Julio's value even at his salary is likely to exceed the draft pick from an analytical standpoint. Hard to replicate what he brings, even if it's not 1300 yards. His presence alone would be a big deal.

 

[QuothTheRaven]

Oh I totally get that as well. My argument is coming more from the side of if you acquire Julio, you're much less likely to be picking WR high this year at least. So if you use that pick that you would have used toward an asset at another position for the future, you can justify moving that pick a little easier. I am very aware that's much easier said than done though.

I would say that regardless of position though, Julio's value even at his salary is likely to exceed the draft pick from an analytical standpoint. Hard to replicate what he brings, even if it's not 1300 yards. His presence alone would be a big deal.

Given that we know that the Falcons wouldn't move Julio until after June 1st, can you really have a handshake agreement that's strong enough to alter the draft strategy?

 

[rossihunter2]

Oh I totally get that as well. My argument is coming more from the side of if you acquire Julio, you're much less likely to be picking WR high this year at least. So if you use that pick that you would have used toward an asset at another position for the future, you can justify moving that pick a little easier. I am very aware that's much easier said than done though.

I would say that regardless of position though, Julio's value even at his salary is likely to exceed the draft pick from an analytical standpoint. Hard to replicate what he brings, even if it's not 1300 yards. His presence alone would be a big deal.

for sure - and while you can probably expect his play to decline, the most recently we saw him, he looked just as explosive as ever
would also be a great move after the draft (if we nail the draft) to add a major piece to hopefully put the team over the top

 

[JAAM]

I got a noti from the NFL app with “WR” and “Ravens” in the title and almost creamed my pants, but it was just Charles Davis mocking Batemen to us

 

[rossihunter2]

I got a noti from the NFL app with “WR” and “Ravens” in the title and almost creamed my pants, but it was just Charles Davis mocking Batemen to us

hahaha
just looked at the mock - with the way the board fell, bateman was 100% the right answer

Oweh wouldnt have been my pick there at 31 but all the OTs were gone - assuming no trade downs - my pick there would have been either creed humphrey or asante samuel jr but i dont mind oweh there instead - especially after grabbing bateman, it feels like we can take a bit of a flier/risk with one of our 2 first picks

davis seemed to be working off a pretty good board there - i disagree with rousseau's value but i think his board matches mine in a lot of ways

 

[rmcjacket23]

I never once speculated he would be traded before June, ftr.

and one example of being aggressive with cap management and trades would be what he worked out to get clowney last year, that was super aggressive and super creative.

Well, that's not really being aggressive with your own cap money though. That's being aggressive with somebody else's cap money. That's convincing another team to basically "buy" draft picks, which is why the NFL didn't allow it.

I would dare say Eric was unlikely to be the first GM in the salary cap era to try to pull an NBA style trade in the NFL with something like this. They've approved two team deals like that before, but they're likely not going to sign off on a three team trade that involves cash for draft picks anytime soon.

I brought up the June trade because, by all accounts, that's likely the single biggest "barrier" to any deal. And I think some fans are ignoring that complication (intentionally or otherwise).

The only way that's not a factor is if you can trade trade assets now for a trade deal that can't be "commenced" until June. I can't confirm whether that's possible or not, nor do I see an example of such occurring. If that's possible, then everything is wide open, except for the obvious cap challenges.

 

[RavensMania]

A trade would more than likely happen today or tomorrow before the draft so both teams can adjust their boards accordingly. If we trade for Julio today or tomorrow, that 99.9% takes us out of picking a WR in the 1st, and I think a Julio trade would signal a rebuild in Atlanta, so they would have to adjust accordingly during this years draft. That’s just from what I’ve been reading.

The Falcons said if he is traded it would be post June 1 for Salary Cap reasons

 

[JAAM]

The Falcons said if he is traded it would be post June 1 for Salary Cap reasons

But I think they can agree in principle beforehand

 

[rmcjacket23]

In regards to the cap in a potential Julio trade, it's absolute doable, but there are consequences.

1. We do still have Ronnie Stanley who would be an easy restructure if we needed to make room this year. You probably hope you can work something out with Julio as well to lower the number a tad, but it's doable either way.

2. However, acquiring Julio probably puts you out of the running for a quality veteran edge and Villanueva. You could probably still lure Dennis Kelly for cheap. The good thing though is that you could conceivably put WR off in the draft and focus the picks on the trenches in a perfect world.

3. The long term ramifications are where you really have to start considering if it's worth it. We have a large impending FA class next year. Of course, some are already likely to move on, but you have Lamar, Andrews, Ricard, Bozeman, Watkins, Jimmy, Gus, BWill, Calais, DeShon, Averett, etc. Now, you probably still keep Lamar and Andrews, but start sacrificing guys like Bozeman. And that's not the worst thing if you can devote this draft to hitting the trenches instead of skill positions.

4. He's 32 and has been injured quite a bit. It sounds good but how much does he have left? You're probably still getting a good year or two but how much is that worth?

For item 3... I don't think that's too big of a concern. Lamar's 5th year option will count $23M, so even with an extension, I would not expect his 2022 cap hit to balloon much bigger than that anyway.
With Andrews and Bozeman, I don't think they'll be so outrageously expensive that you couldn't keep both, especially in year 1. You could easily fit both in on market-value extensions in 2022 for less somewhere in the range of like $15M.

So with Julio's contract, if I were to assume that he has something like a $15M cap hit for 2022, I think you can keep all 3 players for like $30M in cap space. We are currently sitting with a projected $50M in cap space, but that's based on like a $195M salary cap, which is hard to say how that will flush out.

I think it's all feasible, but it certainly doesn't leave a lot of room for upgrades. Many of the guys you listed are very "veteran" that I don't expect to return or cost much to keep. Jimmy, BWill, Calais, for example, could easily (and likely) be on their final year in Baltimore. Hard to say at this point what kind of market would be had for guys like Gus, Elliott, etc.

 

[rmcjacket23]

But I think they can agree in principle beforehand

Right but the open question is whether they can obtain draft picks before June 1. If not, their trade compensation doesn't come until 2022 draft, meaning there's really no reason for Atlanta to trade him today or even this weekend, considering they get zero benefit at all from the trade until then.

The media doesn't seem to have a strong pulse on whether they can acquire 2021 draft picks (and use them) for a trade that can't be official until post-draft.