i mean generally you expect a 1st round pick to be contributing early - even if he's not starting, he should be playing 20+ snaps in week 1 or something's not gone to plan
-
Welcome to PurpleFlock! Be sure to sign up here so that you can chat with your fellow Ravens fans.
Signings, Cuts, Trades
- Thread starter RavensMania
- Start date
i mean generally you expect a 1st round pick to be contributing early - even if he's not starting, he should be playing 20+ snaps in week 1 or something's not gone to plan
im pretty sure EDC said at a presser that they're expecting that to be going on into 2022
ndub
Ravens Ring of Honor
Mean ET3
rmcjacket23
Ravens Ring of Honor
I mean... does he though? Like the one player away philosophy usually works at a certain position group. I'm just not seeing how adding another WR, really regardless of how good they are, puts us ahead of somebody like KC. It's still just one football. One of your more recent first round picks will become an afterthought in this offense with Julio here. Maybe we'll be a better offense for it, but that's still basically throwing in the towel on a guy, since it's likely if you bring Julio in he'll be here for more than one year.
I could make a case that, at least on paper, we're one elite pass rusher away from getting over the top. Or maybe like an elite Center away.
Like if we're talking about studs playing over top of "unknown" players, which is the argument against rookies WR's or even Watkins, why are we focused on the WR core for that?
There's a lot of unknowns on our Oline. I don't know how good or even if Stanley will be back in time to start the season. I have no idea whether Villaneuva will be a good RT or not. I have zero clue whether Bozeman will be good at Center or not. And if literally any of the aforementioned players gets hurt, do I think our Oline is going to be much better than average? Probably not.
I have no vague clue what our pass rush group looks like. Quite frankly, if we were one of the absolute worst teams in football in terms of creating pressure without blitzing, it won't surprise me in the slightest. Now people would argue that we're pretty much always blitzing and that will mask that, but the last time we played KC, and we blitzed a ton, Mahomes absolutely eviscerated our defense, and probably would have done more damage if he simply wanted to.
So for me, if the argument is "well we're one player away", I think we're flat out looking at the wrong position group to obtain said player.
Price is certainly the #1 issue, and it likely will be the #1 thing that prevents him from being here. But I also question whether that's the absolute best use of our resources, and whether it achieves what we're setting out to achieve, both as an offense, and as a team.
i mean im only talking about that generally in a positionless sense - but the reason im not talking about other positions is because none of the rest of them are available whereas julio is, and probably cheaper than he's been in his whole career in terms of draft capital and contract
no one's really arguing julio vs anyone else because no one else of his equivalent play level is available - that's why you consider it, because he's that good (still) and those are the kinds of talents who can put you over the top regardless of position
im not going to pretend that there aren't bigger needs at almost every other position
but if you think he helps you win a superbowl and you can make it work financially then you make that trade... and if you don't think you're close enough or you can't make the money work then you don't...
JAAM
Hall of Famer
nice. I could be way off, but don’t we have an outrageous amount of cap next offseason?
yes, we have 40m based on the 208m, with 49 active players. That's tremendous
JAAM
Hall of Famer
JoeyFlex5
Hall of Famer
That will be wiped away with 2 signings
well 23m is already accounted for with lamar's 5th yr option
JoeyFlex5
Hall of Famer
Oh hell i forgot about that lol
well in that case... I could almost justify a Julio trade.... I won’t though, because it’s moot lol.
Last edited:
rmcjacket23
Ravens Ring of Honor
Yes, strong.
Keep in mind a few things though:
1. That's the ceiling, not the floor. Most analysts I've seen don't expect the 2022 cap to be that high, though we are all expecting full revenue from stadium/ticket sales this year, so who knows. Considering there's still unrecognized deficit from the 2020 revenue shortage, it wouldn't surprise me to see Owners and possibly even the NFLPA have a lower than this # cap hit in 2022, to largely wipe that out. Especially if 2021 is a strong revenue year.
2. While we don't have a ton of notable free agents in 2022, there's probably three that stick out... Andrews, Bozeman, and Ricard. Ricard won't be expensive, but the other two, if they perform well like they usually have, likely will be. Combined, they could easily account for $10-15M of that cap space just to retain. Lamar is obviously the wildcard. While he carries a $23M cap hit next year, there aren't many extensions I would want to see him get that would lower that number. And in fact, I would hope it would jump substantially, probably to at least $30-35M, so as not to backload those deals unnecessarily.
So just retaining three key players and extending Lamar could easily cost us more than half of our cap space. Marcus Peters will also be in the final year of his deal, meaning if we're planning to keep him beyond 2022, he'd likely be an extension candidate as well.
3. For context... $40M in cap space would put us around average, league-wide. It seems like a lot of money, but there will be many, many, many teams with a lot of money to spend.
Two of our division rivals, the Bengals and Steelers, have $59M and $77M in available cap currently also, and they have a good chunk of players under contract. Pittsburgh has no QB of note under contract, but if they draft one, they can sign/re-sign literally anybody they want and still acquire a bunch of good players.
Indianapolis, NY Jets, Miami, Denver, LA Chargers, Raiders, and Broncos all have a very large chunk of money.
So for perspective, we're in a good spot, but so are a lot of teams around the league. There's only about a half dozen teams that are in a tough spot.
yep, aware that we have Andrews, Bozeman as potentials. I don't expect Ricard to be extended but agree it wouldn't be expensive. I would hope they would extend Peters beyond 2022 and also agree we don't want to have Lamar's contract backloaded too much.
All in all we will still be in better shape than we normally are, which bodes well, even if it's only in the middle of the league cap wise. fyi, I'd never expect to be better than that anyways.
rmcjacket23
Ravens Ring of Honor
Agree. I think its just good to keep perspective. $40M seems like a lot, but when that's barely average league-wide, it just means that there's typically at least a couple other teams who would be interested in the same players AND could spend more to get them.
Like I don't see many paths where the Ravens all of the sudden become in the market for a $20M/year player, almost regardless of position, just because we have the cap to do it.
and I hope this aspect of the front office never changes, outside of the occasionally unicorn signing. No matter who we resign or extend next season, we should have plenty of room to sign a couple random free agents and draft picks and that's how it should be, without having to restructure contracts.
Italian Raven
Veteran
Agree with you all.. 40Mil ain't much if you consider we'll be without our most important pieces along the Dline, TE and ST (Campbell, BWill, McPhee, Andrews, Ricard, Levine, Fort, Board, Richards).
Man, that's a lot.
You may then argue Bozeman and Mekari won't be exaggerately missed and can be easily replaced, but even those were cheap commodities as rookie deals. Any depth you're bringing in to replace em, is going to cost us more than that.
RB room's gonna look much emptier, too, with Gus out of the picture.
Man, that's a lot.
You may then argue Bozeman and Mekari won't be exaggerately missed and can be easily replaced, but even those were cheap commodities as rookie deals. Any depth you're bringing in to replace em, is going to cost us more than that.
RB room's gonna look much emptier, too, with Gus out of the picture.
rmcjacket23
Ravens Ring of Honor
Well, Bozeman won't be easily replaced. He's a well above average Guard who will get a pretty good contract in FA if we let him go, and we don't know how he'll perform as a Center.
If you let him walk, you'll at least need a Center, and you may even need a Guard, because we don't know how good Cleveland is either.
Not super concerned about the likes of BWill or Campbell. 2022 was always going to be the year we needed to overhaul our DLine, and we've seen this coming for years. Even with $100M in cap space, I doubt either would be back unless its bargain basement pricing. Campbell is highly likely to retire after this year in my eyes anyway.
Andrews, Bozeman, Lamar are the three up for extensions, and they're probably prioritized in that order (given Lamar is under contract already).
drjohnnyfever
Pro Bowler
We have this year and next to make decisions and we are going to be in the mix over the next 2 years with what they've done this year. Lamar is the biggest issue. Andrews is the next, maybe, but TE's come and go. Yet there aren't many who score 20 TD's in their first 3 years. We need a Vet edge guy and maybe a Vet safety too and you can't have enough CB's. Everything else will work out and we are going to be good and with a chip on our shoulder. Feel that.