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The Random Thought Thread

QtR Nevermore said:
In other sports players do occasionally return from an Achilles in 3 or 4 months. It's not common but not unheard of. Treatments have improved lately.

I think that has maybe passed football fans by because a 3 or 4 month injury is still season ending in football, so it feels like a year long recovery to fans.
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Dont like to brag but I tore my bicep and was smashing pints in 3 weeks
 
RavensMania said:
maybe he'd be willing to take 18m avg and maybe we use voidable yrs to pay for it. Just not too many of them
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It's an option. If Ravens adopt a cash-over-cap strategy, you can really make anything work.

I just have serious doubts that's the long term cap strategy. I think it was 100% used last year as a hedge against the Lamar situation. Even Lamar's deal itself has limited use of void years, and the only long term deal signed after him, B Washington, has zero void years on it.
 
rmcjacket23 said:
It's an option. If Ravens adopt a cash-over-cap strategy, you can really make anything work.

I just have serious doubts that's the long term cap strategy. I think it was 100% used last year as a hedge against the Lamar situation. Even Lamar's deal itself has limited use of void years, and the only long term deal signed after him, B Washington, has zero void years on it.
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I agree with you. I don't think they want to use voidable years going forward. Want and need is a different animal.
 
RavensMania said:
I agree with you. I don't think they want to use voidable years going forward. Want and need is a different animal.
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I think they'd be stupid if they didn't use void years for the duration of Lamar's contract. They've got a top QB, so they're contenders, but they're paying him like one, so money is tight.

If they don't put a team around him, what are they doing? Just trying to get into wildcard contention in a different way?

And for what? For fear of having a down year at an unspecified future point, even though we've seen how quickly teams can turn things around?

The Rams were the cautionary tale for going all in because they were most extreme. They had a losing record last year because their stars and scrubs model couldn't cope with injuries to Stafford, Kupp and Donald. The Ravens greater focus on depth would cope better with that, but it was a stars-&-scrubs problem, not an all-in problem.

This is supposed to be the Rams down year, yet they're still in playoff contention and they seem to have hit on draft picks, so they've got hope for the future. They're not in such an ugly situation after all. Should we really punt on several years of the Lamar window for fear of having a 23 Rams type season?
 
QtR Nevermore said:
I think they'd be stupid if they didn't use void years for the duration of Lamar's contract. They've got a top QB, so they're contenders, but they're paying him like one, so money is tight.

If they don't put a team around him, what are they doing? Just trying to get into wildcard contention in a different way?

And for what? For fear of having a down year at an unspecified future point, even though we've seen how quickly teams can turn things around?

The Rams were the cautionary tale for going all in because they were most extreme. They had a losing record last year because their stars and scrubs model couldn't cope with injuries to Stafford, Kupp and Donald. The Ravens greater focus on depth would cope better with that, but it was a stars-&-scrubs problem, not an all-in problem.

This is supposed to be the Rams down year, yet they're still in playoff contention and they seem to have hit on draft picks, so they've got hope for the future. They're not in such an ugly situation after all. Should we really punt on several years of the Lamar window for fear of having a 23 Rams type season?
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So couple things:
1. Not using void years doesn't, in any way, prohibit a team from being competitive or winning a SB. Chiefs don't use void years much. Eagles do. There's no one way to formulate the roster.
Not using void years purely puts more emphasis on drafting, player development, and being great at getting quality play out of cheaper veterans.
With the way our FO structures things, void years is the way you get a player like OBJ. Without it, we're never signing him. But it wouldn't necessarily prohibit you from extending somebody like JM. It just means you'll have to make some cap casualties elsewhere.
2. While I'm generally an advocate of using void years, it's not fool-proof. You listed the Rams, which is fine. They won a SB. They're probably at least 2-3 years away from contending for another, and most likely, it'll be with another QB (which is the whole point).
The Eagles use it religiously, and they have arguably the best roster in football. The Saints are the undeniable kings of using void years, and they're not a good team and have very little prospects of being a good team any time soon. They are what you are advocating against, which is, at ceiling, a 10 win team that will get a playoff spot but be dead $ in the playoffs.

"void years" is purely a product of a cash-over-cap strategy, meaning teams will voluntarily pay more $ now to obtain players. More cash today, defer salary cap impact for as long as possible. That's the strategy.

That strategy requires precisely two things:
a) an Owner who is willing to risk lower profits for the possibility of winning more. There are Owners who will do that, and there are Owners who won't. And quite frankly, the public isn't qualified to determine which one they should be.
b) you HAVE TO win. It's not like an "attempt" kind of thing. You have to succeed at it. You can't be the Saints. The Saints are just spending tons of $ every year and getting nothing to show for it. Once you show an Owner 1-2 years of a strategy that doesn't work, the very next thing he's going to do is blow it up, slash payroll, and rebuild.

In the end, the QB and management will drive whether you're competitive year-over-year. It won't have much to do with your cap strategy.
 
rmcjacket23 said:
So couple things:
1. Not using void years doesn't, in any way, prohibit a team from being competitive or winning a SB. Chiefs don't use void years much. Eagles do. There's no one way to formulate the roster.
Not using void years purely puts more emphasis on drafting, player development, and being great at getting quality play out of cheaper veterans.
With the way our FO structures things, void years is the way you get a player like OBJ. Without it, we're never signing him. But it wouldn't necessarily prohibit you from extending somebody like JM. It just means you'll have to make some cap casualties elsewhere.
2. While I'm generally an advocate of using void years, it's not fool-proof. You listed the Rams, which is fine. They won a SB. They're probably at least 2-3 years away from contending for another, and most likely, it'll be with another QB (which is the whole point).
The Eagles use it religiously, and they have arguably the best roster in football. The Saints are the undeniable kings of using void years, and they're not a good team and have very little prospects of being a good team any time soon. They are what you are advocating against, which is, at ceiling, a 10 win team that will get a playoff spot but be dead $ in the playoffs.

"void years" is purely a product of a cash-over-cap strategy, meaning teams will voluntarily pay more $ now to obtain players. More cash today, defer salary cap impact for as long as possible. That's the strategy.

That strategy requires precisely two things:
a) an Owner who is willing to risk lower profits for the possibility of winning more. There are Owners who will do that, and there are Owners who won't. And quite frankly, the public isn't qualified to determine which one they should be.
b) you HAVE TO win. It's not like an "attempt" kind of thing. You have to succeed at it. You can't be the Saints. The Saints are just spending tons of $ every year and getting nothing to show for it. Once you show an Owner 1-2 years of a strategy that doesn't work, the very next thing he's going to do is blow it up, slash payroll, and rebuild.

In the end, the QB and management will drive whether you're competitive year-over-year. It won't have much to do with your cap strategy.
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1. The Chiefs don't use void years but they probably should have. They're SB contenders with their best ever defense, but they've really made life hard for Mahomes on offense with their lack of weapons. Even a Nelson Agholor would make a difference to them.

2. Of course void years alone is not a viable strategy. The Rams won a Super Bowl, kept the team together one more year because most of the key players were still under contract and then realised it was time to rebuild. I have no problem with that strategy, nor with the Saints pushing money into the future trying to win with Brees. Their problem is they still haven't taken their medicine years after Brees' retirement.

My view is that the Ravens should carry on as they have been, trying to put together a roster similar to this season's around Lamar with a mix of expensive contracts, cheap veterans, draft picks and UDFAs, pushing a little money into the future, if necessary, to make that happen.
The only thing I'd cut back on going forward is the over-investment in WRs. Bateman, Agholor and Duvernay have been severely underused because the Ravens have put too many resources into that position.

What I disagree with is the idea that the Ravens cap should eat the entirety of the void years next year, when we're already facing a roster crunch of starters leaving. That would be wasting a year of good players on expensive (or rookie) contracts simply out of fear that we might have a bad year at some point in the future.
 
QtR Nevermore said:
1. The Chiefs don't use void years but they probably should have. They're SB contenders with their best ever defense, but they've really made life hard for Mahomes on offense with their lack of weapons. Even a Nelson Agholor would make a difference to them.

2. Of course void years alone is not a viable strategy. The Rams won a Super Bowl, kept the team together one more year because most of the key players were still under contract and then realised it was time to rebuild. I have no problem with that strategy, nor with the Saints pushing money into the future trying to win with Brees. Their problem is they still haven't taken their medicine years after Brees' retirement.

My view is that the Ravens should carry on as they have been, trying to put together a roster similar to this season's around Lamar with a mix of expensive contracts, cheap veterans, draft picks and UDFAs, pushing a little money into the future, if necessary, to make that happen.
The only thing I'd cut back on going forward is the over-investment in WRs. Bateman, Agholor and Duvernay have been severely underused because the Ravens have put too many resources into that position.

What I disagree with is the idea that the Ravens cap should eat the entirety of the void years next year, when we're already facing a roster crunch of starters leaving. That would be wasting a year of good players on expensive (or rookie) contracts simply out of fear that we might have a bad year at some point in the future.
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1. I mean OK, but if they wanted a Nelson Agholor, they could get one. He's not expensive, nor an impact player. They could get him today if they wanted to. They just can't get an OBJ, who would've cost $15M on a one year deal to get. Those are the players they'll miss out on.
2. Agree with the Saints concerns, however, I will say the public doesn't really think this way. Once you go cash-over-cap, fans don't think you should ever go back. Because even after Brees is gone, the next objective is to find a stud rookie QB (which they haven't done). Once you get that, the public will want you to mortgage everything to win with a rookie QB, and then they'll want you to mortgage everything once you pay him to keep the gig going. So really, the only time its acceptable for a team to "tank" is when they don't have a QB.
3. In regards to eating the void years next year, you pretty much have to. In order to not do that, you'll need to extend the player. In reality, void years are sunk costs. They're irrelevant to decision making. There's nothing you can do to change it. The only question is "do I want to give this player another contract". If you want OBJ's cap hit to be lower, he needs to be re-signed. Same for Pierce, Zeitler, Agholor, RYS, Edwards, and Stone, all of which had void years added to their deal.

It's not really a question with those guys. They'll decide whether they want to, or can, retain them, and go from there. If they can't or won't, the void year cap impact hits, and then its over.
The question isn't about what's done in the past. The question is what happens in the future. If you sign JM to a $20M AAV contract, do you put 4-5 void years on the end of it and push the cap out as far as you can, understanding that he'll likely have large cap hits on the back end when he's far less productive.
 
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