Signings, Cuts, Trades

[UPennChem]

Because I'm bored, my definitive FA predictions:

Unrestricted Free Agents:
Anthony Averett - walks
Chris Board - re-signs, 1 year deal around minimum
Bradley Bozeman - walks
Josh Bynes - re-signs, 1 year deal around minimum (post-draft)
Calais Campbell - re-signs, 1 year deal
DeShon Elliott - re-signs, 1 year deal to rehab value
Justin Ellis - re-signs, 1 year deal around minimum
LJ Fort - walks
Devonta Freeman - walks
Justin Houston - keep dialogue open and revisit after draft
Tony Jefferson - re-signs, 1 year deal around minimum
Josh Johnson - keep dialogue open and revisit after draft
Anthony Levine - retires
Pernell McPhee - retires
Latavius Murray - walks
Patrick Ricard - re-signs, multi year contract
David Sharpe - re-signs, 1 year deal around minimum
Jimmy Smith - retires
Eric Tomlinson - re-signs, 1 year deal around minimum
Sammy Watkins - walks
Brandon Williams - walks

Restrictred Free Agents:
Otaro Alaka - non-tendered
Chris Westry - non-tendered/re-signed to lesser deal

Exclusive Rights Free Agents:
Tender all (Crawford, Dorsey, Knight all questionable)

Cut Candidates:
Miles Boykin - cut
Sam Koch - stays, but competition added
Josh Oliver - stays
Ben Powers - traded
Marcus Peters - extended to lower cap number
Ja'Wuan James - stays
Alejandro Villanueva - cut
Tavon Young - cut but keep dialogue open for return

If all this happened, I'd say we'd honestly be in a pretty tough spot. Just a ton of holes and not a ton of money to fox those problems. You're never going to have a perfect team but could be worse than a healthy version of this year's team

 

[RavensMania]

I think he’ll get that 5 year deal but it might be structured in the sense that it has to be redone after year 3 to make it more manageable. Lamar holds a lot of leverage right now.

kind of like Flacco's deal, huh.

I'm certainly hoping we don't have to do that, especially with the cap increasing in 2023.

 

[marklar]

kind of like Flacco's deal, huh.

I'm certainly hoping we don't have to do that, especially with the cap increasing in 2023.

Agreed, my nightmare is another deal stuctured like the Flacco one where the team had to renegotiate after 3 years and having zero leverage.
I'd rather they bend over immediately and take a bigger hit in the early years than the Flacco structure

 

[rmcjacket23]

Agreed, my nightmare is another deal stuctured like the Flacco one where the team had to renegotiate after 3 years and having zero leverage.
I'd rather they bend over immediately and take a bigger hit in the early years than the Flacco structure

I'm on the fence about it. Realistically, they're in different times though.
By all accounts, the cap is going to balloon up big time in the next 2-3 years. So logically, it makes sense for teams to try to align their larger cap jumps with larger cap structures.

I think I saw some back and forth with Brian McFarland on Twitter awhile back, and he basically said he thought it was a foregone conclusion that IF the Ravens extend Lamar this offseason, his cap number would decrease in 2021, not increase. His cap number is like $23M for this year, so if you're signing him to, say, a $40M/year contract, and your cap number in year 1 is less than $23M, that means you're going to have some pretty gigantic cap numbers on the back end. At least in the $45-50M range by the time you get to, say, year 3 or year 4.

In my opinion, that's not ideal. However, I understand the thought process.

Realistically, if you wanted to come close to "straight lining" Lamar's deal, and want his cap numbers do be at least like $30-35M in year 1, it will greatly reduce your ability to field a Championship contender in 2022. Like he will eat up a very large chunk of whatever free cap space you have and whatever you can create. It's the difference in whether you can retain players like Bozeman, or even somebody like Peters.

What I think is becoming somewhat obvious is, with the large contracts for franchise QBs, teams are willing to punt salary cap into the future for a very long period of time. If you look at the Josh Allen or the Pat Mahomes deals, even ignoring the length of the contracts, it's pretty much just a gigantic bunch of roster bonuses later in the contracts. They do this because they can just keep adding extensions or restructures to it all day long, because in the end, those guys are going to be the QB for that franchise for probably 10-15 years or maybe even more. The "end game" is so far down the road that all of the players, coaches, and GM's involved in the deal will likely be retired, and some of them may even be dead by then.

And yes, they'll get to a point in the very distance future where, like the Saints, they have large dead money cap hits for a guy who's no longer playing and the bill eventually comes due. But it's becoming pretty clear that pretty much every team is willing to live with that.

The reality of straight-lining franchise QB contracts is that it's really only useful if you don't plan on contending now.

 

[Grim]

Because I'm bored, my definitive FA predictions:

Unrestricted Free Agents:
Anthony Averett - walks
Chris Board - re-signs, 1 year deal around minimum
Bradley Bozeman - walks
Josh Bynes - re-signs, 1 year deal around minimum (post-draft)
Calais Campbell - re-signs, 1 year deal
DeShon Elliott - re-signs, 1 year deal to rehab value
Justin Ellis - re-signs, 1 year deal around minimum
LJ Fort - walks
Devonta Freeman - walks
Justin Houston - keep dialogue open and revisit after draft
Tony Jefferson - re-signs, 1 year deal around minimum
Josh Johnson - keep dialogue open and revisit after draft
Anthony Levine - retires
Pernell McPhee - retires
Latavius Murray - walks
Patrick Ricard - re-signs, multi year contract
David Sharpe - re-signs, 1 year deal around minimum
Jimmy Smith - retires
Eric Tomlinson - re-signs, 1 year deal around minimum
Sammy Watkins - walks
Brandon Williams - walks

Restrictred Free Agents:
Otaro Alaka - non-tendered
Chris Westry - non-tendered/re-signed to lesser deal

Exclusive Rights Free Agents:
Tender all (Crawford, Dorsey, Knight all questionable)

Cut Candidates:
Miles Boykin - cut
Sam Koch - stays, but competition added
Josh Oliver - stays
Ben Powers - traded
Marcus Peters - extended to lower cap number
Ja'Wuan James - stays
Alejandro Villanueva - cut
Tavon Young - cut but keep dialogue open for return

What's your rationale behind the following:

CB Tavon Young
LB LJ Fort
C Bradley Bozeman

Not that I disagree, just curious. I'd think Fort would be brought back because we seemed to like him better than Bynes when both were here; however, could see Bynes back too over Fort due to age + injury.

 

[RavensMania]

I'm on the fence about it. Realistically, they're in different times though.
By all accounts, the cap is going to balloon up big time in the next 2-3 years. So logically, it makes sense for teams to try to align their larger cap jumps with larger cap structures.

I think I saw some back and forth with Brian McFarland on Twitter awhile back, and he basically said he thought it was a foregone conclusion that IF the Ravens extend Lamar this offseason, his cap number would decrease in 2021, not increase. His cap number is like $23M for this year, so if you're signing him to, say, a $40M/year contract, and your cap number in year 1 is less than $23M, that means you're going to have some pretty gigantic cap numbers on the back end. At least in the $45-50M range by the time you get to, say, year 3 or year 4.

In my opinion, that's not ideal. However, I understand the thought process.

Realistically, if you wanted to come close to "straight lining" Lamar's deal, and want his cap numbers do be at least like $30-35M in year 1, it will greatly reduce your ability to field a Championship contender in 2022. Like he will eat up a very large chunk of whatever free cap space you have and whatever you can create. It's the difference in whether you can retain players like Bozeman, or even somebody like Peters.

What I think is becoming somewhat obvious is, with the large contracts for franchise QBs, teams are willing to punt salary cap into the future for a very long period of time. If you look at the Josh Allen or the Pat Mahomes deals, even ignoring the length of the contracts, it's pretty much just a gigantic bunch of roster bonuses later in the contracts. They do this because they can just keep adding extensions or restructures to it all day long, because in the end, those guys are going to be the QB for that franchise for probably 10-15 years or maybe even more. The "end game" is so far down the road that all of the players, coaches, and GM's involved in the deal will likely be retired, and some of them may even be dead by then.

And yes, they'll get to a point in the very distance future where, like the Saints, they have large dead money cap hits for a guy who's no longer playing and the bill eventually comes due. But it's becoming pretty clear that pretty much every team is willing to live with that.

The reality of straight-lining franchise QB contracts is that it's really only useful if you don't plan on contending now.

my preference would be the straight line approach and yes, I'm aware how limiting that would be in year 1, but I'm a planner and always think about the future and not the present. Paying him 30 to 35m this season will absolutely help tremendously in years 3 through 5. That being said, I will completely understand why they don't do it this way and they most likely won't. It will most likely be more like Josh Allen's contract.

 

[rmcjacket23]

my preference would be the straight line approach and yes, I'm aware how limiting that would be in year 1, but I'm a planner and always think about the future and not the present. Paying him 30 to 35m this season will absolutely help tremendously in years 3 through 5. That being said, I will completely understand why they don't do it this way and they most likely won't. It will most likely be more like Josh Allen's contract.

And that's fair. I think the thing most fans don't recognize is that they seem to correlate cap space or cap flexibility as like this significant advantage that manifests itself into winning more games. I think if fans looked back historically, that's not rooted in fact. In fact they'd find very little correlation between salary cap flexibility and winning football games.

So the idea of straight lining it so that, in 3-4 years, he's somehow a mild "bargain" and that you'd then have a large amount of cap space to spend, doesn't really translate into winning more football games. There's too many other factors. If you draft poorly during that timeframe, it really won't matter what his cap hit is. If you sign expensive FAs who don't pan out, like an Earl Thomas, it won't really matter what his cap hit is. Injuries will happen. Players that you sign to large contracts won't play as well as they did when they were cheaper.

Heck, with Lamar, maybe the biggest ? is... will he be as good in 3-5 years? When Lamar's 30-32 and doesn't have the ability to out-run everybody on the field, is he still going to be a great player? Nobody knows that right now.

And there's really no better example of this than the last few years. We had an MVP QB on a rookie deal making the bare minimum. You had numerous high quality players who were on rookie deals playing great (Andrews, Marlon, Stanley, etc.). And we won zero Lombardi's and weren't particularly close to winning any in any of those seasons. So once you recognize that, is it really that important that he have a $40M cap hit in 3 years vs a $50M cap hit in 3 years?

These are all fair questions and they're all one's GM's think of all the time. The Ravens are luckier than most in this regard, but a lot of HC's and GM's don't have the luxury of planning 3-5 years in advance, because they don't even know if they'll have a job 3-5 years in advance. They don't have the luxury of losing now and setting themselves up for later. They'll get fired before later comes and whatever good work they did will be somebody else's benefit.

I certainly don't recommend backloading large contracts at all positions. There's too much risk and careers and declines at other positions seemingly happen much quicker. But QB is the one where its kind of like "what's the point" of straight lining or front loading the deal.

 

[Simba]

What's your rationale behind the following:

CB Tavon Young
LB LJ Fort
C Bradley Bozeman

Not that I disagree, just curious. I'd think Fort would be brought back because we seemed to like him better than Bynes when both were here; however, could see Bynes back too over Fort due to age + injury.

Young I just don't think is worth his current cap number. I'm not sure he'll agree to another straight payout without testing the market first.

Fort is just older and coming off of injury while some younger guys like Welch and Board have stepped up. A veteran would still be nice and I think they'd lean toward Bynes with how he's stabilized the unit twice now.

Bozeman I think is just going to be priced out from what we're willing to pay. I think we'd love to keep him but we'll also draw a line in the sand.

 

[RavensMania]

And that's fair. I think the thing most fans don't recognize is that they seem to correlate cap space or cap flexibility as like this significant advantage that manifests itself into winning more games. I think if fans looked back historically, that's not rooted in fact. In fact they'd find very little correlation between salary cap flexibility and winning football games.

So the idea of straight lining it so that, in 3-4 years, he's somehow a mild "bargain" and that you'd then have a large amount of cap space to spend, doesn't really translate into winning more football games. There's too many other factors. If you draft poorly during that timeframe, it really won't matter what his cap hit is. If you sign expensive FAs who don't pan out, like an Earl Thomas, it won't really matter what his cap hit is. Injuries will happen. Players that you sign to large contracts won't play as well as they did when they were cheaper.

Heck, with Lamar, maybe the biggest ? is... will he be as good in 3-5 years? When Lamar's 30-32 and doesn't have the ability to out-run everybody on the field, is he still going to be a great player? Nobody knows that right now.

And there's really no better example of this than the last few years. We had an MVP QB on a rookie deal making the bare minimum. You had numerous high quality players who were on rookie deals playing great (Andrews, Marlon, Stanley, etc.). And we won zero Lombardi's and weren't particularly close to winning any in any of those seasons. So once you recognize that, is it really that important that he have a $40M cap hit in 3 years vs a $50M cap hit in 3 years?

These are all fair questions and they're all one's GM's think of all the time. The Ravens are luckier than most in this regard, but a lot of HC's and GM's don't have the luxury of planning 3-5 years in advance, because they don't even know if they'll have a job 3-5 years in advance. They don't have the luxury of losing now and setting themselves up for later. They'll get fired before later comes and whatever good work they did will be somebody else's benefit.

I certainly don't recommend backloading large contracts at all positions. There's too much risk and careers and declines at other positions seemingly happen much quicker. But QB is the one where its kind of like "what's the point" of straight lining or front loading the deal.

absolutely agree and as you said regarding the Ravens, we are a bit lucky. We do know that we most likely still have DeCosta in 5 years and he will do what he feels is best for the organization, while balancing out short and long term salary cap hits.

 

[Simba]

If all this happened, I'd say we'd honestly be in a pretty tough spot. Just a ton of holes and not a ton of money to fox those problems. You're never going to have a perfect team but could be worse than a healthy version of this year's team

It would still leave enough money to supplement some spots though. Like yeah, maybe Bozeman is priced out, but you could potentially get a band aid for half of what he'd cost and then look to fill that hole in the next couple of years. So it looks like a lot of holes IF all of this were to play out, but you still have room to play in the free agent market even if it's not a star or anything.

 

[marklar]

I'm on the fence about it. Realistically, they're in different times though.
By all accounts, the cap is going to balloon up big time in the next 2-3 years. So logically, it makes sense for teams to try to align their larger cap jumps with larger cap structures.

I think I saw some back and forth with Brian McFarland on Twitter awhile back, and he basically said he thought it was a foregone conclusion that IF the Ravens extend Lamar this offseason, his cap number would decrease in 2021, not increase. His cap number is like $23M for this year, so if you're signing him to, say, a $40M/year contract, and your cap number in year 1 is less than $23M, that means you're going to have some pretty gigantic cap numbers on the back end. At least in the $45-50M range by the time you get to, say, year 3 or year 4.

In my opinion, that's not ideal. However, I understand the thought process.

Realistically, if you wanted to come close to "straight lining" Lamar's deal, and want his cap numbers do be at least like $30-35M in year 1, it will greatly reduce your ability to field a Championship contender in 2022. Like he will eat up a very large chunk of whatever free cap space you have and whatever you can create. It's the difference in whether you can retain players like Bozeman, or even somebody like Peters.

What I think is becoming somewhat obvious is, with the large contracts for franchise QBs, teams are willing to punt salary cap into the future for a very long period of time. If you look at the Josh Allen or the Pat Mahomes deals, even ignoring the length of the contracts, it's pretty much just a gigantic bunch of roster bonuses later in the contracts. They do this because they can just keep adding extensions or restructures to it all day long, because in the end, those guys are going to be the QB for that franchise for probably 10-15 years or maybe even more. The "end game" is so far down the road that all of the players, coaches, and GM's involved in the deal will likely be retired, and some of them may even be dead by then.

And yes, they'll get to a point in the very distance future where, like the Saints, they have large dead money cap hits for a guy who's no longer playing and the bill eventually comes due. But it's becoming pretty clear that pretty much every team is willing to live with that.

The reality of straight-lining franchise QB contracts is that it's really only useful if you don't plan on contending now.

I really just mean that I do not want a contract whereboth parties know it HAS to be renegotiated since the team cannot bear the cap hit in year 4.
I agree that a flat contract is not the right way, but you have to be able to sustain the written contract to at least have *some* leverage in case Jackson does regress or gets significant injuries

 

[rmcjacket23]

If all this happened, I'd say we'd honestly be in a pretty tough spot. Just a ton of holes and not a ton of money to fox those problems. You're never going to have a perfect team but could be worse than a healthy version of this year's team

I mean... what holes exist in this plan that don't exist already? The only one that really sticks out is Bozeman and maybe Young.

I don't think anybody is really expecting Averett to be back. The rest of the guys are mostly depth players or aging players that we really should be focusing on getting younger and better performance out of anyway.

Of actual FA's, the only guys I'll be shocked to not see back, quite frankly, are Ricard and Bynes. If every other FA on that list was not retained, it wouldn't surprise me. I mean the list has got like RBs and old Linebackers that I really just don't care if they're back.

Realistically, Williams and Watkins are pretty easy non-re-signs unless you get them for like the absolute minimum. Elliott I'm not sure is that much better than Stephens, who would be significantly cheaper. Think all roads point to him being gone or re-signed for very cheap.

Campbell, Bozeman, Peters, Tavon. Those are the four guys I have my eye on.

 

[rmcjacket23]

I really just mean that I do not want a contract whereboth parties know it HAS to be renegotiated since the team cannot bear the cap hit in year 4.
I agree that a flat contract is not the right way, but you have to be able to sustain the written contract to at least have *some* leverage in case Jackson does regress or gets significant injuries

Well I mean that's probably going to happen regardless. Guys like Allen and Mahomes have like $45-50M cap hits in the next like 2-3 years. The team will restructure by that point, and they both know it. The only way the player cares is if he loses money on it.

If Lamar regresses, then you just eat the cap hit and move on to a different QB. No different than what happened with Flacco. You can't sign a big deal like this without significant dead money anyway. That's just the nature of the business. That hit will only really hurt the team for one, maybe two years anyway, and you'll be in a transition mode at QB at that point anyway, so nobody will care.

 

[UPennChem]

I mean... what holes exist in this plan that don't exist already? The only one that really sticks out is Bozeman and maybe Young.

I don't think anybody is really expecting Averett to be back. The rest of the guys are mostly depth players or aging players that we really should be focusing on getting younger and better performance out of anyway.

Of actual FA's, the only guys I'll be shocked to not see back, quite frankly, are Ricard and Bynes. If every other FA on that list was not retained, it wouldn't surprise me. I mean the list has got like RBs and old Linebackers that I really just don't care if they're back.

Realistically, Williams and Watkins are pretty easy non-re-signs unless you get them for like the absolute minimum. Elliott I'm not sure is that much better than Stephens, who would be significantly cheaper. Think all roads point to him being gone or re-signed for very cheap.

Campbell, Bozeman, Peters, Tavon. Those are the four guys I have my eye on.

I didn't say anything about any of those guys leaving didn't make sense. More likely than not 75% to 100% of those things will happen. It's just as I said, going to leave a lot of holes and currently undesirable positions.

Right now, if BB we don't REALLY have a center. We have very little data on UDFA TCC. We saw that Skura and Mekari's play at C were pretty detrimental two seasons ago. Bb while not elite, steadied the ship. Will it be the end of the world if he goes, no, but when we already have such a problem at T, it's just not great to also have C as a need.

At corner, I'm not sure any team in the history of the NFL had a set of corners as deep as the 2021 Ravens. And yet, we were totally out of them by the end of the year. There's the saying from Harbs that you can never have too many corners. But as you and Simba have said, the Ravens are paying a huge amount of money to corners that's not really sustainable. If you lose AA, Tavon, and Jimmy that's legitimately entire starting CB group on a mediocre team. I don't consider that a small loss. You're gonna have to add a considerable number of bodies, but again not the end of the world.

At S, sure Stephens may be just as good as Elliot. But if we also lose him, your entire corps is Clark, Stephens and Stone. Not only is there literally no depth, that's not a world beating unit. Again not the end of the world.

On the DL, BWill is out and possibly Campbell. If we lose both of them, we're literally down to Wolfe, Madabuike, Washington and Ellis. This was already a position group that needed upgrading and bad. To lose Campbell which is gotta be 50/50 would leave a pretty big hole. This position group scares me the most.

Linebacker play is also a need. At both inside and outside. Someone veteran needs to be next to Queen and there's gotta be someone to compliment Oweh.

What I see is the only weak unit on offense gets weaker and the entire defense which was already weak gets weaker at every level. There's not a ton of cap so we've really gotta draft well.

 

[rmcjacket23]

I didn't say anything about any of those guys leaving didn't make sense. More likely than not 75% to 100% of those things will happen. It's just as I said, going to leave a lot of holes and currently undesirable positions.

Right now, if BB we don't REALLY have a center. We have very little data on UDFA TCC. We saw that Skura and Mekari's play at C were pretty detrimental two seasons ago. Bb while not elite, steadied the ship. Will it be the end of the world if he goes, no, but when we already have such a problem at T, it's just not great to also have C as a need.

At corner, I'm not sure any team in the history of the NFL had a set of corners as deep as the 2021 Ravens. And yet, we were totally out of them by the end of the year. There's the saying from Harbs that you can never have too many corners. But as you and Simba have said, the Ravens are paying a huge amount of money to corners that's not really sustainable. If you lose AA, Tavon, and Jimmy that's legitimately entire starting CB group on a mediocre team. I don't consider that a small loss. You're gonna have to add a considerable number of bodies, but again not the end of the world.

At S, sure Stephens may be just as good as Elliot. But if we also lose him, your entire corps is Clark, Stephens and Stone. Not only is there literally no depth, that's not a world beating unit. Again not the end of the world.

On the DL, BWill is out and possibly Campbell. If we lose both of them, we're literally down to Wolfe, Madabuike, Washington and Ellis. This was already a position group that needed upgrading and bad. To lose Campbell which is gotta be 50/50 would leave a pretty big hole. This position group scares me the most.

Linebacker play is also a need. At both inside and outside. Someone veteran needs to be next to Queen and there's gotta be someone to compliment Oweh.

What I see is the only weak unit on offense gets weaker and the entire defense which was already weak gets weaker at every level. There's not a ton of cap so we've really gotta draft well.

Right but I guess my point is a lot of these position groups were already thin or weak heading into 2021. That's not going to be any better or worse now.

Pass rush is still a need today just like it was a year ago from today. I don't think keeping Justin Houston really changes that at all.
We knew before 2021 that BWill and Campbell were probably on their last legs. Dline is going to be a priority this offseason and always was.

I don't think we lose all three of Tavon, Averett and Jimmy, but if we do, that's not surprising either. We'll have two really good one's coming back and we'll need to add some talent in the draft to go along with it. They can talk all they want about "never having enough corners", but the reality is it ain't going to happen.

Our safety position was thin going into 2021. We had Elliott, Clark, and no depth behind it. Seems the same to me, except all we're doing is swapping Elliott for Stephens.

Bozeman is the only real "loss" I see that either wasn't expected or we really don't have an obvious answer for. The reality is if we just keep trying to run it back with the same group, we won't improve. Just keeping any of these players really doesn't make our team better. It just makes us not worse. It's basically a neutral move.

 

[Tank]

It would still leave enough money to supplement some spots though. Like yeah, maybe Bozeman is priced out, but you could potentially get a band aid for half of what he'd cost and then look to fill that hole in the next couple of years. So it looks like a lot of holes IF all of this were to play out, but you still have room to play in the free agent market even if it's not a star or anything.

If we expect to compete in the tournament we have to address the O line issues including a viable option at center, whether that be Bozeman or in the draft. I wish we could have found a way to keep Jensen, he was the perfect fit.

Band aids on the O line ain’t gonna cut it, we’ve learned that the hard way.

 

[UPennChem]

Right but I guess my point is a lot of these position groups were already thin or weak heading into 2021. That's not going to be any better or worse now.

Pass rush is still a need today just like it was a year ago from today. I don't think keeping Justin Houston really changes that at all.
We knew before 2021 that BWill and Campbell were probably on their last legs. Dline is going to be a priority this offseason and always was.

I don't think we lose all three of Tavon, Averett and Jimmy, but if we do, that's not surprising either. We'll have two really good one's coming back and we'll need to add some talent in the draft to go along with it. They can talk all they want about "never having enough corners", but the reality is it ain't going to happen.

Our safety position was thin going into 2021. We had Elliott, Clark, and no depth behind it. Seems the same to me, except all we're doing is swapping Elliott for Stephens.

Bozeman is the only real "loss" I see that either wasn't expected or we really don't have an obvious answer for. The reality is if we just keep trying to run it back with the same group, we won't improve. Just keeping any of these players really doesn't make our team better. It just makes us not worse. It's basically a neutral move.

I agree but I guess my point is simply this. Especially on Defense, keeping just a few of those guys may be go along way. Like keeping Campbell makes the DL situation way less dire. Finding a way to keep one of AA or Tavon makes the corner position a lot stronger. Keeping Houston makes the pass rushing position a lot less dire. They all would still need to be addressed and you'd always like to get better rather than move neutrallly. I just fear that if you lose TOO much, when you replace them, the move is actually backward and neutral would have been better.

All that being said, realistically I would like to try and keep Campbell and Houston. Then I would like to try and work out a situation that keeps Tavon here. I've all but accepted Bozeman is probably gone.

 

[rmcjacket23]

I agree but I guess my point is simply this. Especially on Defense, keeping just a few of those guys may be go along way. Like keeping Campbell makes the DL situation way less dire. Finding a way to keep one of AA or Tavon makes the corner position a lot stronger. Keeping Houston makes the pass rushing position a lot less dire. They all would still need to be addressed and you'd always like to get better rather than move neutrallly. I just fear that if you lose TOO much, when you replace them, the move is actually backward and neutral would have been better.

All that being said, realistically I would like to try and keep Campbell and Houston. Then I would like to try and work out a situation that keeps Tavon here. I've all but accepted Bozeman is probably gone.

Right, but you're also spending limited cap resources on keeping these players. I don't think retaining Campbell is going to be particularly cheap. I know keeping Averett won't be.
I mean if Campbell is going to cost me $6-7M, can I find somebody on the market for half that price that's not significantly worse? I'd keep everybody if they all cost the vet minimum, but many of them won't.
If I keep Campbell, where am I getting a Center from? A Tackle from? Pass Rushers? Are the like 8 positional upgrades we'd like to see all coming from the draft? Because that's not realistic.

Every dollar you spend on trying to keep a band aid on certain position groups is a dollar not spend upgrading a group that may need more emphasis.

 

[Simba]

If we expect to compete in the tournament we have to address the O line issues including a viable option at center, whether that be Bozeman or in the draft. I wish we could have found a way to keep Jensen, he was the perfect fit.

Band aids on the O line ain’t gonna cut it, we’ve learned that the hard way.

I don't disagree for the most part, but paying a guy like Bozeman more than you think he's worth is how you get into cap trouble in the first place. I'm all about filling holes but we also have to be realistic in that it's not easy to fill every single one of them with a good or better player or a draft pick that can come in right away and play quality ball.

 

[UPennChem]

Right, but you're also spending limited cap resources on keeping these players. I don't think retaining Campbell is going to be particularly cheap. I know keeping Averett won't be.
I mean if Campbell is going to cost me $6-7M, can I find somebody on the market for half that price that's not significantly worse? I'd keep everybody if they all cost the vet minimum, but many of them won't.
If I keep Campbell, where am I getting a Center from? A Tackle from? Pass Rushers? Are the like 8 positional upgrades we'd like to see all coming from the draft? Because that's not realistic.

Every dollar you spend on trying to keep a band aid on certain position groups is a dollar not spend upgrading a group that may need more emphasis.

Again totally agree. But in the same way we don't really have the cap to bring in people that are going to be upgrades over the bandaid people without getting significantly worse at some of those bandaid positions. I understand both sides because they both have merit. Each position needs to be assessed individually. For example it might make sense to pay Campbell but not at all AA or Tavon etc. I just wouldn't totally rule out trying to bring back a small number of our guys.