I mean, you said 15M. Those aren't my words. Let me break down my point in a simple-to-digest bulleted list for you:
1. The cap is increasing every year & is projected to increase a lot in the coming years.
2. We have inflation of WR (and many other) salaries, which is hard to curtail w/o some owner collusion (which would be illegal)
3. Teams pay players for what they will do for them not what they have done and I think the market is showing that.
I don't think you need an elite LT. You need a guy who won't get the QB killed. I think a developmental guy could certainly be fine. Villaneuva was OK but he was below average last year in many ways. You may get that with a rookie, may not. You won't know unless you play them though.
You could find quality play throughout the draft at nearly any position. If you scout & develop well & get lucky then anything can happen. Sure, more LTs get Drafted higher than Cs but we've seen guys like Kelly, Mangold, etc. go high. We've also seen plenty of them [Centers, Left Tackles, etc.] bust too. There's no guarantee those dudes do well either. I think NFL teams struggle to find LTs period despite the round lol. I could give you a longer list to prove that LT is truly a crapshoot as any position on the OL.
1. In terms of Hollywood, I chose $15M as the floor because that's where the topic was a month or two ago when discussing his value. Today, the $15M range would pay him as a top 20 WR, and put him in-line with the likes of Allen Robinson, Cooper Kupp (who's obviously underpaid), Brandin Cooks, Robert Woods, Mike Evans of the world.
I don't think you need owner collusion to curtail WR spend. All you need is what I think we've seen in the last couple years, which is a mass influx of high-end WR talent in draft classes. Once teams realize that the draft is filthy rich with WRs, they'll stop spending high end money in FA on them. What will happen is the top tier guys will stay with their current teams on lucrative extensions, and the FA market will eventually plateau or even decline.
There was a time when RBs were highly valued also. Now, they're not. Just because the cap rises doesn't mean all position groups rises at the same level with the cap. Some will rise higher (QBs), others won't.
In terms of what teams pay for, its a mixed bag. Pretty much every team is paying for future performance, while taking into account past performance. If you had a receiver who's literally never produced, its not like some team is going to give them $20M a year because "we think his potential is super high". They'll extrapolate future production while also acknowledging what you've done to earn that.
2. I agree there's unknowns with draft picks and LTs in particular. My criticism was mostly of the fanbase, i.e. the fact that I'm sure there are dozens of posters on here and millions elsewhere who will whine and complain if whatever LT is out there besides Stanley isn't at least substantially better than Villaneuva, which I personally don't know is super realistic. If we just trot out somebody who's the same but with a different last name, all the fanbase is going to do is whine and bitch about how we "didn't do enough to address the position".
I don't find that intelligent, of course, but that's never stopped anybody before.
3. I never said LT wasn't a crapshoot. I'm implying it is. What I'm also implying is that if you made a list of starters, by position group, LT will be one of the positions on a football team with the highest number of starters who were first round picks. It won't be as high as QB likely, but I'll bet if you stack high end players and quality starters on a curve, by round selected, LT's will be among the highest position groups where using a first round pick on them is widely the best approach.
Doesn't mean its impossible to find one elsewhere, but it becomes significantly harder than other position groups historically.
Hence why I said in another post that teams are more comfortable finding quality Centers outside the first round than quality LT's. Combination of harder to find quality players to begin with and the value of the position.
Also why I think there's still value in taking a Tackle on day 2-3. That player may be good enough to play RT right away (which means maybe you kick Moses or James to LT), or would likely be at least a swing tackle with the possibility of starting at LG. That's what I would hope out of a mid round Tackle pick in year 1.
Basically a better version of Tyre Phillips, who hasn't worked out very well so far, but maybe because he never got a strong chance at LG either.
