I usually read good posts twice but this one is too depressing. Only silver lining is the new GM will have no choice but to build cheep through the draft for the next 2-3 years while these Tanny era nightmares start dropping off the radar. Losing Revis, Tone, Keller, et al last season forced some tier 2 guys onto the field for most of the season which is a good thing since most of them will become our core team for a while.
The Jets are rebuilding..it's that simple. And odds are we'll be saying goodbye to a few players we didn't think we would. But rebuilding isn't what it used to be.Jets can easily be back on their feet by 2014.
All signs point to a dreadful win/loss record next year. Wonder if Woody will blame Tanny and the cap situation as way to justify Rex staying on even longer?
I don't agree with that. It has affected the team, especially in recent times. At first it seemed alright to backload or frontload contracts, but what goes around comes around, the waves eventually hit shore and we have to move contracts around just to touch the positive. Look at what happened after 2010. We couldn't afford our own FAs. A lot of our good players left and were replaced with late round picks / undrafted FAs / PS players. Don't get me wrong, Tanny was good at restructuring contracts to squeeze out that extra 10-15 million each year, but overall we've let a lot of talent walk because we couldn't afford to adequately replace them. To compound things he often trades up in the draft giving away more picks that could be used to get more talent. It happened on the oline and with the WRs as well. Heck, running backs also after 2011. LT was never replaced, Woody was never replaced, Faneca wasn't replaced, Edwards wasn't replaced, Cotchery was barely replaced. It was ridiculous. All of them had their jobs replaced by backup caliber players. Plaxico was decent, but they should have known they needed a WR to stretch the field as well. 2011 we had holes, 2012 we had more holes and then injuries were the double whammy that really exposed our lack of depth. I hope the new GM is miracle worker. I hope he understands the concept of trading down as well. We've got a lot of holes to fill.
I'm really not as worried as most people. Will it hinder us? Sure. But the guys that are leaving are mostly substandard, or will be overpaid. I am fairly certain we can fill out a roster. The Jets need to focus on that. They've been doing the "player away" approach for years, and it hasn't worked. -X-
Cleveland, Indy, and Tampa all need CBs and have a ton of cap room. Probably won't be hard to trade one of the two if the new GM really wants to.
But.... But.... But.... Tanny... Genius.... Cap..... Surely if he has been called a genius so many times it MUST be true. Surely the man who made those decisions is a brilliant GM, apologist and has a freakishly good sense for how to build a team. And to think, we let this work of art go! Now some other team can snap him up so he can work his wonders for them. Good riddance.... BTW, I hope it is the Patriots. Give him five years and they won't compete again for a generation.
People still aren't seeing the whole picture here. Yes, we are in worse shape than anybody being 20 million over the cap but that doesn't include a single free agent either. So none of these people count a single penny towards the cap: Yeremiah Bell Mike DeVito Braylon Edwards Nick Folk Shonn Greene Lex Hilliard Dustin Keller Laron Landry Brandon Moore Chaz Schilens Matt Slauson Bryan Thomas So yeah they can cut a few more people and get under the cap but then they will need to use whatever they can free up to fill out a roster with rookies or bums. And why would anybody want to restructure their contract to stay with the Jets? This isn't the team it was 4 years ago. Of course none of this is news, it has been discussed here for the last year.
I am strugglnig to care too much about our cap situation - basically in the NFL you are going nowhere without a really good QB, we dont have one and have no realistic options to get one other than through the draft which takes a year or two or three to pan out, so we might as well do what we can now to sort out the cap situation going forward and more or less write off the next season or two.
Tanny's handling of our cap is equivalent to the mortgage crisis. The contracts have exploded and now we're deep in debt. Time to cut back on expenses and luxuries and tighten the belt for a while.
The part of the equation that some of you are not understanding that, assuming they make cuts to get under, they will only have 36-38 players under contract. Cutting 2 starters on the defensive side plus both Safeties are free agents. 4 guys on the defensive side of the ball that need to be replaced. When you hear talk about the salary cap issues, this is at the center of it. Needing to sign 15-17 players and having 12 mil to do it is going to result in a very thin roster of talent. The 12 mil is a rough estimate when you factor in most likely cuts and signing the rookie class.
The Jets are at 146.6M right now. They'll cut Jason Smith ($12M), Calvin Pace ($8.56M), Bart Scott ($7.15M), Sione Pouha ($3.83M) and Eric Smith ($3M). That gets the cap figure down to 112.2M. The cap limit next years is going to be approximately $121 million. The Jets will carry over about $4.9M from 2012 so they'll have $125.9 million to work with. So at this point the Jets are looking at $13.7M in cap space after the obvious cuts are done. Ok, so here's where the tough decisions begin. The Jets can make back another $1.53M by cutting Tim Tebow. That would essentially be cutting their 4th round pick from last year but they'll do it if they can't make a trade for him. $15.23M in cap space. They will rework David Harris again and push much of his hit into 2014. They'll get something like $5M in 2013 relief so we're at $20.23M. They will rework Santonio Holmes and get another $5M. That's $25.23M. Now they're in the ballpark but still a few million short given the roster issues. If they decide they need that space they go to D'Brick and push that one down a year. So the Jets wind up with the $17M they'll need to flesh out the starting roster and sign the rookies. They wind up with $8 to $11 million for the rest of the roster and the emergency fund. It'll work. It just isn't the way you'd normally like to do business.
Jets can, if they really want to get down to having about 30 million in cap space available, but to get that low does require some creativity. The Patriots are helped on the 2013 scene by a large roll over, but also several of their key players aren't under contract for 2013, including Welker and a couple others. On the whole though the Pats have done a better job keeping the cap under control by drafting well. Much of the Jets cap issues has been teh built to "win now" philosphy the team took starting in 2009 and trading away picks unwisely. But that's life.
The Jets have a similar problem to the one the Steelers have right now. They both built into a window and then tried to extend it unsuccessfully. The difference is that the Steelers have had better talent through the entire process and so they won in 2008 and went back in 2010 and are now in cap hell.
