Signings, Cuts, Trades

[Simba]

We signed some byu running back I've never heard of because Justice Hill and Barnet have injuries. Obviously harbs hasn't said anything about the magnitude of the injury.

Gets through the last week of practice.

Probably a PS guy as well. Before signing him, we’d have had no RB there. Need someone out there to simulate the opponent for game prep.

 

[JAAM]

I’m curious to see if Clowney does indeed skip the season if he doesn’t get the money he’s after. He needs to swallow his pride and accept a 1 year deal like Yannick signed. Him skipping the season does absolutely nothing for his value.

 

[Dom McRaven]

I’m curious to see if Clowney does indeed skip the season if he doesn’t get the money he’s after. He needs to swallow his pride and accept a 1 year deal like Yannick signed. Him skipping the season does absolutely nothing for his value.

Except bringing it down

 

[JAAM]

Except bringing it down

My #SIIE brother, if we can get him for a deal similar to Yannick, I will kiss EDC myself. Screw social distancing.

 

[rmcjacket23]

My #SIIE brother, if we can get him for a deal similar to Yannick, I will kiss EDC myself. Screw social distancing.

We can't afford to pay Clowney $12M. He'll need to be a lot closer to half the deal they gave Yannick.

 

[JAAM]

We can't afford to pay Clowney $12M. He'll need to be a lot closer to half the deal they gave Yannick.

Don’t we have 16 in cap?

 

[Simba]

Don’t we have 16 in cap?

Gotta carry some into the season for injuries and stuff. And once we hit roster cuts, we have to account for 53 instead of 51 and the whole practice squad. That cap goes down quick come week 1.

Would think if he came in around $8-10M they'd be willing to move some things around to make it work but anything above that isn't really feasible. And $10M is still on the high end.

 

[rossihunter2]

Gotta carry some into the season for injuries and stuff. And once we hit roster cuts, we have to account for 53 instead of 51 and the whole practice squad. That cap goes down quick come week 1.

Would think if he came in around $8-10M they'd be willing to move some things around to make it work but anything above that isn't really feasible. And $10M is still on the high end.

i think if it's around 10m they find a way to make it work because he's worth it

 

[JAAM]

From Clowney’s perspective, wouldn’t you want to sign here for a cheap, 1 year prove it deal with a legit contender on a loaded defense, get your numbers up then secure the bag in the offseason elsewhere? Come on man, put that pride aside.

 

[Simba]

i think if it's around 10m they find a way to make it work because he's worth it

I can agree with that. I know restructures are generally looked at as bad but we have a couple of deals (Peters in particular) that are super easy to do without much impact to future caps.

 

[rmcjacket23]

I can agree with that. I know restructures are generally looked at as bad but we have a couple of deals (Peters in particular) that are super easy to do without much impact to future caps.

I think they're even worse when you factor in that you're increasing your credit card bill for next year, when you pretty much know for certain you'll have less income coming in. Peters cap hit actually goes down $1.5M from 2020 to 2021, which is good. The last thing I'm trying to do is swap like $3-4M of that into 2021.

Even just looking at 2021, we have close to $150M in cap spent currently. Even assuming a cap of like $180-185M, which may be ambitious, that's not nearly that much when you consider neither Stanley (who would easily cost $15-20M on a franchise tag or a long-term deal) nor Judon are under contract. There's some players you could move on from to create space if needed (Ingram, BWill), but that just creates more holes to potentially fill.

I would be quite surprised to see the Ravens dip into contract restructures to sign anybody still left on the market. It'll either be at our price, or it won't be at all. I think they're perfectly fine carrying over the rollover cap, especially when, it my eyes, its likely Thomas wins his grievance, and he'll cost at least $10M against the 2021 cap.

 

[JoeyFlex5]

I think they're even worse when you factor in that you're increasing your credit card bill for next year, when you pretty much know for certain you'll have less income coming in. Peters cap hit actually goes down $1.5M from 2020 to 2021, which is good. The last thing I'm trying to do is swap like $3-4M of that into 2021.

Even just looking at 2021, we have close to $150M in cap spent currently. Even assuming a cap of like $180-185M, which may be ambitious, that's not nearly that much when you consider neither Stanley (who would easily cost $15-20M on a franchise tag or a long-term deal) nor Judon are under contract. There's some players you could move on from to create space if needed (Ingram, BWill), but that just creates more holes to potentially fill.

I would be quite surprised to see the Ravens dip into contract restructures to sign anybody still left on the market. It'll either be at our price, or it won't be at all. I think they're perfectly fine carrying over the rollover cap, especially when, it my eyes, its likely Thomas wins his grievance, and he'll cost at least $10M against the 2021 cap.

How is it likely that Thomas wins his grievance? He had a contract clause that voided his salary and guarantees for conduct detrimental to the team. Not showing up to meetings, showing up late frequently, punching teammates, and sharing confidential team footage on social media, are all right in line with what his contract clause was referring to.

 

[Simba]

I think they're even worse when you factor in that you're increasing your credit card bill for next year, when you pretty much know for certain you'll have less income coming in. Peters cap hit actually goes down $1.5M from 2020 to 2021, which is good. The last thing I'm trying to do is swap like $3-4M of that into 2021.

Even just looking at 2021, we have close to $150M in cap spent currently. Even assuming a cap of like $180-185M, which may be ambitious, that's not nearly that much when you consider neither Stanley (who would easily cost $15-20M on a franchise tag or a long-term deal) nor Judon are under contract. There's some players you could move on from to create space if needed (Ingram, BWill), but that just creates more holes to potentially fill.

I would be quite surprised to see the Ravens dip into contract restructures to sign anybody still left on the market. It'll either be at our price, or it won't be at all. I think they're perfectly fine carrying over the rollover cap, especially when, it my eyes, its likely Thomas wins his grievance, and he'll cost at least $10M against the 2021 cap.

I think it depends on how you look at it. If you restructure say, Brandon Williams again, that's bad. If you restructure Marcus Peters, there's such little impact. If you were to take $4M off his base salary right now, you'd be incurring charges of $1.33M on the cap in 2021 and 2022. Opens up $2.66M now and such little impact to the next 2 years while providing flexibility now if they needed it. To me, that's an easy call. Every single team across the league can find ways to scrap $1.33M off the cap for 2 years without missing whatever player that's tied to. Hell, you can even take a little more off the base salary if you wanted and you still have such a minimal impact.

Now, it's something you don't do if you don't have to by all means, but if say Clowney was willing to take a deal here and the only thing preventing you from getting that done is adding under $1.5M to the cap for the next 2 years, there's no debate.

 

[rmcjacket23]

How is it likely that Thomas wins his grievance? He had a contract clause that voided his salary and guarantees for conduct detrimental to the team. Not showing up to meetings, showing up late frequently, punching teammates, and sharing confidential team footage on social media, are all right in line with what his contract clause was referring to.

1. I think that would depend on how both sides argue it.
2. My thought is he's certainly not the first person to be cut for conduct detrimental, and in pretty much all the cases you can find of a player being cut for said concept, they did much worse things than he did, which was essentially late to meetings and getting in a camp fight, all of which the NFLPA would argue are a) fine-able offenses, which they did and b) part of the normal course of a player on a team.

Even Mike Florio's article here, where he quoted an agent that he discussed the issue with, calls the whole process "groundbreaking", in that its likely to be close to the first of its kind. Conduct detrimental is likely to be an extremely broad topic in contract language and in interpretation, and I think it would be easy for the NFLPA to argue that there were different punishments already available to be used and/or were used (fines) and that this conduct doesn't rise to nearly that level.

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.c...aking-effort-to-invalidate-guaranteed-salary/

Ultimately my guess is they'll go to the fight with Clark as the "final straw", and it'll be up to an arbitrator to set precedent here.

 

[rmcjacket23]

I think it depends on how you look at it. If you restructure say, Brandon Williams again, that's bad. If you restructure Marcus Peters, there's such little impact. If you were to take $4M off his base salary right now, you'd be incurring charges of $1.33M on the cap in 2021 and 2022. Opens up $2.66M now and such little impact to the next 2 years while providing flexibility now if they needed it. To me, that's an easy call. Every single team across the league can find ways to scrap $1.33M off the cap for 2 years without missing whatever player that's tied to. Hell, you can even take a little more off the base salary if you wanted and you still have such a minimal impact.

Now, it's something you don't do if you don't have to by all means, but if say Clowney was willing to take a deal here and the only thing preventing you from getting that done is adding under $1.5M to the cap for the next 2 years, there's no debate.

I'm more or less viewing it as if you need to restructure to create more than $2.6M this year. All depends on what Clowney's price tag is and what we're willing to pay. If we were willing to pay $10-12M on a one year deal, you'll need more than $2.6M most likely. You'll probably need closer to $4-5M, meaning you have to restructure nearly the entire $10M salary to get that.

I agree that a $1-2M restructure isn't a big problem. But they're rarely in that position. They usually need more than that in order to restructure.

For perspective, you could cut RGIII and roll with one of the other backups and achieve the same.

 

[Simba]

I'm more or less viewing it as if you need to restructure to create more than $2.6M this year. All depends on what Clowney's price tag is and what we're willing to pay. If we were willing to pay $10-12M on a one year deal, you'll need more than $2.6M most likely. You'll probably need closer to $4-5M, meaning you have to restructure nearly the entire $10M salary to get that.

I agree that a $1-2M restructure isn't a big problem. But they're rarely in that position. They usually need more than that in order to restructure.

For perspective, you could cut RGIII and roll with one of the other backups and achieve the same.

Well that's how this conversation started. If Clowney is in the $8-10M range, they don't have to do too much to make that work. That's where a guy like Peters comes in - easy restructure with minimal impact.

I don't think they'd be interested at a higher value than that because it would require more extreme measures.

 

[rmcjacket23]

How is it likely that Thomas wins his grievance? He had a contract clause that voided his salary and guarantees for conduct detrimental to the team. Not showing up to meetings, showing up late frequently, punching teammates, and sharing confidential team footage on social media, are all right in line with what his contract clause was referring to.

And while I understand the article even references the idea of "guaranteed money is only guaranteed for injuries, reduction of performance, etc.", the reason why this ruling will ultimately be so important, and why you've rarely seen this ruled in the team's favor, is because teams will get more aggressive with cutting players with performance issues over "conduct detrimental", and thus voiding guarantees. They'll start doing so over missed meetings, disagreements, etc.

I would also point you to the Patriots, who recently just "won" grievances with Antonio Brown and Aaron Hernandez. They "won" because they didn't pay out the full guarantees... but they did pay out a substantial amount of them.

They cut Hernandez for, literally, being a serial killer, and they STILL had to pay out a substantial amount of his guaranteed money. It took them about 5 years to get like a $2.3M credit back against the cap. They still had to pay him a $3.5M deferred signing bonus, after he had killed people. I think we can agree that would be considered "conduct detrimental".

They cut Antonio Brown when he had $9M in guaranteed money left, and refused to pay. They settled that this year at about half. I would say his conduct was more detrimental than Earl's also.

Brown's case is probably a good example, because multiple "sports lawyers" I've seen on like Twitter have suggested that, inevitably, they'll settle. If they're arguing over $10M, they'll settle for $5M or something like that. That's usually what they push for in arbitration, so that both parties feel good about themselves in the end.

The other good news is that an arbitrator is unlikely going to let Earl "double dip", meaning whatever he signs for this year, he can't get paid by two teams at the same time. So if somebody signs him for $5M this year, it'll likely reduce the $10M he's asking for by that amount.

That's why right now he has a $10M dead money hit in 2021. That's not likely to change, as that's the proration of his signing bonus, which we almost certainly won't be able to recoup. The question is over the $10M in base salary that was "guaranteed" to him for 2020 that we are refusing to pay.

 

[Dom McRaven]

My #SIIE brother, if we can get him for a deal similar to Yannick, I will kiss EDC myself. Screw social distancing.

Lacie will kick your ass though.

 

[Simba]

FYI, Tony Pauline's latest "report" regarding Clowney.

Most league insiders I’ve spoken with, including a great source who I called just before typing this out, still believe Clowney ends up with the Ravens, as I suggested last week. It checks off a lot of boxes for both sides. That said, I have no direct knowledge of the two sides talking.

So yeah... pure conjecture with no merit.

 

[JoeyFlex5]

FYI, Tony Pauline's latest "report" regarding Clowney.

Most league insiders I’ve spoken with, including a great source who I called just before typing this out, still believe Clowney ends up with the Ravens, as I suggested last week. It checks off a lot of boxes for both sides. That said, I have no direct knowledge of the two sides talking.

So yeah... pure conjecture with no merit.

Strong double down on a less than bold prediction. It’s happening.