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Signings, Cuts, Trades
- Thread starter RavensMania
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im happy to own that - win rate is one stat that specifically measures wins in 2.5s or less which is quite a specific stat - ive gone back and watched a fair amount of film of ferguson since the season ended and he improved a lot as the year went on in all facets of his game - a lot of his pass rushes came on the interior (where he admittedly didnt do well) but im looking at the way he rushes and im seeing him get positive push but not disengaging or having a counter and so he doesnt get more but when rushing off the edge he wasnt getting taken out of the play a lot, he was just consistently not making the most of the control he created for himself (it's why i wrote about him in the offseason thread earlier this offseason)
he needs to get into his NFL body this offseason and he needs to work on his disengages and his counters and using his hands to help him in those situations and i think that will come with more reps against competition in training camp where he's actually learning how to pass rush properly
it is important to remember that coming into week 1 he was inactive and basically expecting to sit most of the year behind Judon, Mcphee, Bowser and Tim Williams - it's hard to develop things like your hand usage during the year and the step up in competition level from college is absurd (where he never needed to use anything more than his raw talent)
which is why it was so important for me seeing him get better down the stretch - he had a bad game against the 49ers where he got benched and he clearly went and focussed and worked that week because he was monumentally better the next 2 weeks against the Bills and Jets
i think its hard to really make any judgement calls yet on a rookie who was thrown into the fire mid-season coming out of a small school
so im happy to be called an apologist but i do find it incredibly premature to condemn him given those circumstances after 1 year especially when i see improvement from game-to-game and especially based on 1 stat which while disappointing is fairly nebulous in its importance
at least let him have the offseason and training camp before you get on him
allblackraven
Hall of Famer
Yeah, I've got belly of an elite O lineman
rmcjacket23
Ravens Ring of Honor
Well if you didn't keep Judon, you can theoretically pay the same price you'd pay Judon to somebody on the open market. If you felt like you could get an upgrade in the $15-20M price range, theoretically, you could do that.
I just think the actual upgrades will be at the top end or higher than that range, and the guys in that range may not end up being on the open market anyway.
I think, like for the last few years, we'll continue to take a more "volume" approach to pass rushing. I agree that its extremely doubtful you'll find a pass rusher in this draft that's going to go out and play 70-80% of the snaps and get you double digit sacks.
You need better players (or better performance) than Bowser and Ferguson have given you, but I still think their objective will be a rotation and to keep guys fresh. And I think they'll do that through adding multiple rushers in the draft, likely through day 2 and day 3 picks.
People are just being optimistic thats all but im sure no one actually would feel comfortable going into the season with him and judon as our best rushers. gonna have to show me something. I have no faith in unproven players. He was a only a rookie so he still has time to grow but still, if rather us grab someone else
absolutely - im not advocating not adding pieces to the position - just suggesting its ridiculous to think his rookie year is necessarily indicative of whether he's going to be successful through his career
Ellicottraven
Ravens Ring of Honor
Derek Wolfe was supposedly to visit with the Ravens. Anybody hear what is going on?
Wouldn't be until the 18th at the absolute earliest since that's when FA officially starts. Honestly not sure how his agent would be setting up meetings considering he's a UFA, but that's beyond me...
Lamar Jackson is proof of that in just 1 year
whole thing's been fishy from the start but it sounds like it's apparently not tampering because it's only the agent scheduling meetings that are going to happen once the new league year starts?
all a bit odd
i honestly think its mostly getting reported as leverage - broncos want to keep him and he wants to stay there from what i can tell
Ellicottraven
Ravens Ring of Honor
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/...ce-2016-why-cash-trumps-cap-new-cba-and-more/
Say what? Really? After reading through this article I'm baffled. Is it an optical illusion or are we somewhat cheap as a team?
Say what? Really? After reading through this article I'm baffled. Is it an optical illusion or are we somewhat cheap as a team?
it's JLC - look at the fine print in terms of timeframe... he's making a really odd argument - it's only logging that payroll data between 2016-2019
that's a tiny period of time to make a judgement call about the spending over time and its philosophical importance given that rookie contracts are longer than that time period
So with most of those teams at the bottom there are reasons why they are low in terms of payroll - for the Colts, Bills and Browns it's because they rebuilt their teams during this time, the Browns stocked up on draft picks and didn't give out many major contracts, the colts last offseason hardly spent at all despite huge amounts of cap space and the bills are likewise flush with cap space
This offseason the texans and cowboys are flush with cap space with the expectation that they will have to spend a lot of it - which is the 2nd problem with this article - it's measuring and making a judgement despite the fact that the offseason hasn't even played out (and it seemingly isnt taking into account any of the in-season money spent)
the ravens are pretty unique on that list because we've been consistently up against the cap which limits the amount of money we could spend basically since 2013 - now while im not saying flacco's contract was bad it, among a spate of other inflexible contracts left us with tons of dead money despite not spending money in the timeframe because the way the deals were structured meant the cash was frontloaded in signing bonuses and the cap hits were backloaded because of it - add to that the fact that pitta and rice were taking up cap space but not contributing and you get spending problems
the real dumb thing in this article is JLC advocating for just spending more to fix problems suggesting that the cap isnt important - the problem is you cant spend money if you're right at the edge of the cap - ultimately the cap is just a measure of money spent at some point so cash and cap space in the end come up to the same number but over a longer period of time than the 3-4 seasons he's using in his data (because most major contracts are longer than 3 years)
the other major flaw specifically with regards to him advocating we just pay judon whatever (and also spend large in free agency) is that his numbers dont take into account all the in-season cash we spent (or have locked ourselves in to spend) on those contracts
the biggest common element of all those teams at the bottom of the payroll list is that none of them have given out a QB contract during the period that the data includes
basically because of the shortness of this metric it favours teams that had tons of cap space to begin 2016 and not many good players or contracts so they seemingly had no cap on their spending and it favours teams that are bad because they will be cutting players rather than keeping them and be able to go after other teams's players
and it also doesnt take into account non-player spending - something that the ravens have always done a lot of (as have the cowboys etc.) so no way are either of those 2 franchises "cheap"
the biggest indicator that this is all absolutely bullshit is that if you look at the list of the highest cash spenders since 2016 only the eagles have done well at all (and they find themselves consistently in cap hell)...
the rest of the top 5: jaguars, falcons, bears and packers - the packers probably on this list because after decades of not spending to the max they went ham with their cap space
but it doesnt really apply to the ravens because we've always spent up to the limit of the cap space - for us to have spent more since 2016 we would have had to break the salary cap - which tells you everything you need to know about how bad our cap situation actually was up until this past offseason
TL;DR
1) to look at the highest cash and lowest cash spenders there's no correlation between spending more cash (over a 4 season period) and actually being successful over the long-term
2) the shortness of the data period means that all the lowest spenders on the list just happen to be teams that havent had to give a qb a new contract which makes the whole thing fairly pointless straight away
3) ultimately cash is cap space spent at a point in time - the reason cap space is more important is because it's a hard limit that teams would face major consequences for breaking - if a team is up against the cap it physically cant spend more cash than it has cap space without backloading deals via signing bonuses (at which point that cash just makes it harder to spend more cash later on down the line) - there's no magic money tree for spending without it accounting onto the cap at some point in time
and most importantly of all - it's JLC so it's completely pointless
and even more tellingly it's supported by the guys at spotrac and everyone knows that overthecap is better
allblackraven
Hall of Famer
The article failed o mention one important fact - out of 7 bottom teams, 6 had QB on a rookie deal for 2 or more years during the 16-19 time span. Plus the Chargers but that's Spanos.
Talking about the 2020 payroll - Ravens also have loads of free agents and very short roster at the moment.
rmcjacket23
Ravens Ring of Honor
So I consider myself to have more knowledge about contract structures than most, and I also don't consider myself an expert by any stretch of the imagination...
So when I read this, the first thing I think of is this... Jason LaCanfora is an idiot who clearly doesn't understand how NFL contracts work, and how they relate to the salary cap.
I might ramble a bit here, but things I think people should know:
Cash spending and Cap spending can often dramatically differ.
The reason for this is primarily bonuses, which are typically paid immediately (in that year), with the cap impact being spread out over several years.
I would have expected LaCanfora to understand this, because if he did, he should have been able to reconcile back the fact that teams can have higher salary caps than cash spending. Would be particularly true in the later years of a contract for somebody like Joe, who frequently got a lot of cash up front, with bigger cap hits later on.
The absolute worst paragraph this guy could have written was this:
"According to Spotrac, the Cowboys (20th) and Ravens (21st) are both in the bottom third of current 2020 payroll, at around $130M, with the cap projected to go to $200M or slightly higher. Both teams have Super Bowl ambitions. It's time for both to start spending like it, and ownership to budget accordingly."
That's great Jason, but unfortunately, that's not how the real world works. He's comparing a cap number ($200M) to a cash number $130M. That's apples to oranges. He's implying the Ravens have $70M to spend, which from a cap perspective, isn't true. They can spend $70M in cash, but they can only have about $30M of that count towards the current year's salary cap, meaning he's recommending they defer about $40M of spending from a cap perspective into future years. Also known as... a pretty bad idea.
Also, I think he's cherry picking the period's he's looking at. For example, in 2019, the Ravens Cash spend was just under $185M, and there cap spend was just over $186M. It was like a $1M difference... a trivial amount of money in the grand scheme of things.
As most of you recall, we had quite a lot of dead money during the back end of the Joe Flacco era. That means we spent a lot of cash up front that we deferred against the cap. So in my opinion, if he wanted to get a true picture, he should have sampled from like 2012-present. I would bet we'd be much more favorable during that period.
And by the way... the 2019 way is much more of what I would expect going forward, i.e. the "DeCosta approach" to salary cap. Ozzie was great at talent evaluation, but he generally sucked for the last 5-6 years+ as somebody who navigated the salary cap. Put far too much emphasis in larger signing bonuses, and had way too much fluctuations in cap numbers for high-earning players.
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I like him. Just dont trust him yet lol.
Ellicottraven
Ravens Ring of Honor
Thanks to all of you for enlightening me. JLC is indeed an idiot. Confirmed.
we should probably just all go back to censoring his name again
but what this also tells you is that the spotrac guys also dont know what they are talking about - they're supporting this hokum for some reason
overthecap should be the only resource people use lol
rmcjacket23
Ravens Ring of Honor
I'm not blaming Spotrac for his stupidity. They generally put out objective data, without much commentary. Its Jason's fault for not being able to understand the data, and coming to erroneous conclusions from it.
I prefer OTC, but I actually find Spotrac's tools to be quite a bit more user friendly. OTC needs a makeover, and fast.
i agree about that sure - was more that the guy who runs spotrac was out there quote tweeting JLC saying "preach"...
4 days left until the Tag deadline - i think if the aim was always only to tag and trade we probably would have tagged him already - could be wrong - feels like the delay in tagging usually means we're negotiating (or attempting to) but would be odd to still be negotiating at this point given how close free agency is and that its not in judon's best interest to do anything before the tampering window opens
probably just reading too much into this
probably just reading too much into this