You omit the big question - what would Mo have accepted a year ago? The two sides did meet and had been discussing an extension. No reporting of where the difference was
5 years and his role on the team has grown since his rookie year. He's become one of the best two way lineman in the league today. I don't see why you are attempting to downplay just how good Mo has been for us. I still don't know why you are bringing up old past greats, when Mo is just about to enter his prime and he has a crap-ton left in the tank. He could very well carve his own name in NFL history. I think at the end of his career, Mo could be a player that generated 100+ sacks in his career and will continue to be on the verge / be on the first team all pro. He's been on the 2nd team twice already. Mo is not fragile, he has started 12 or more games each of his seasons as a Jet. He had a turf toe injury that was a thing of the past and he unfortunately suffered a broken leg, that does not make 1 fragile. Dee Milliner is fragile. Mo is a top 5 interior lineman and should be paid so. You are thinking of all the reasons why Mo isn't a great player and none of them are correct IMO Brad. JJ Watt all he does is beat the offensive lineman's weakest link. Mo isn't as good as JJ Watt in terms of rushing the passer and play-making ability, but Mo has something JJ Watt does not and that is the ability to make everyone around him better. That is a skill-set not many lineman share.
The new gm folded to appease the pitchfork and torch crowd(upgraded to billboards and airplanes of course) We could be entering a cycle here
I'm not attempting to downplay how good he's been for us. I'm just pointing out that nobody could have been good enough to get the kind of contract he's apparently asking for. I challenged you many posts ago to produce evidence that the Jets would benefit from signing Mo to a huge contract as a DL. You haven't even tried to do that. Go point at the huge DL contracts that paid off recently. Just list the great contracts that helped their teams win. When I look at overthecap I see this list: Suh - $60M guaranteed, $19M a year Cox - $63M guaranteed for injury, $36M fully guaranteed, $17M a year Vernon - $40M guaranteed, $17M a year Watt - $20M guaranteed, $51M guaranteed at beginning of 2nd season, $16.67M a year Dareus - $42.9M guaranteed, $15.85M a year Quinn - $15M guaranteed, $14M a year Jackson - $31.5M guaranteed, $14.25M a year McCoy - $14,75M guaranteed, $13.6M a year That's ALL the deals that pay a DL more than $11M a year. None of the teams involved is a playoff team and none of them is close to a championship. Several of them are perennial bottom feeders. Now point to the deal that justifies paying Mo like one of the guys above and then tell me why it's in our benefit to follow the lead of the Fins, LA Rams. Giants, Texans, Bills, Eagles, Jaguars and freaking Bucs? You're attached to the player and that I understand but there is no evidence that paying him a huge contract is going to do anything more than pay him a huge contract. There's no evidence that the teams choosing to make this type of commitment will benefit in the long run. Huge salaries are great for players but they are lousy for NFL teams under a capped system. Go look at the list I posted and address that list. Anything else you post on the topic is just useless BS.
I'll tell you what is useless bullshit, you comparing Mo to old greats under a completely different cap structure, this isn't the 80s and the 90s. Get with the times, or be left behind. Being attached to a player has nothing to do with it. I see what Mo's full contributions to the team are and you do not, it's really that plain and simple. You have no counter-argument to that and that bothers you apparently. Spending money on the wrong players is lousy for NFL teams. Given our "success" in the draft, keeping your best players is essential. But yeah let's trade Wilkerson for a 2nd and let's get a Ducasse out of it! Or maybe we can draft a Stephen Hill? Dolphins paying a malcontent in Suh is not the same as the Jets paying for a player like Wilkerson.
In terms of this, like I mentioned before we are entering a new age in terms of the progressive cap, but let's go over these players. Suh - Malcontent asshole; contract not justifiable Cox - one of the better 2 way lineman in the league, Eagles had to pay to retain his services; if Wentz becomes that guy they will contend for division titles [they've been to a SB more recently then us] Vernon - overrated Watt - has gotten his team into the playoffs pretty much by himself in a weak division. Imagine if O'Brien actually worked on getting a QB? Watt's contract did not stop them from overpaying Brock O. Dareus - Off the field distractions. Quinn - Rams are improving each year and will be challenging the NFC West for division crown. Quinn and Aaron Donald are all pro caliber players. Got Goff and now they can contend in the future AND pay Aaron Donald. Jackson - Overrated, but the Jags are improving McCoy - Bucs are improving The majority of these teams are pretty young and still need some more pieces, but they are continuing to improve and some of these teams are passing the Jets in terms of talent. How many of these teams do you think the Jets could beat right now? You call me a bullshitter all you want and challenge me to this and that, but you are doing the same thing by not recognizing the progressive cap increase. I highlighted the good deals and those deals haven't handicapped them from improving. Mo is better than the majority on that list and doesn't come with the off-the field issues Dareus / Suh has.
Paying anybody like they're royalty in a team game is only justified if they're clearly capable of lifting the team to great heights. Mo clearly is not capable of lifting the Jets to great heights because they've been a mediocre to bad team every year he's been with them. You wanting to pay him as though he's the key to a championship is a joke, because if he was the key to a championship we'd have gotten a lot closer top that goal during his FIVE year tenure with the team. The only team on the list above that was justified in paying their player what they paid him was the Texans with Watt and that's because he's the only player on that list who is clearly an all-time great and who has exceptional marketing value outside of the lines as well. The Jets have no good reason to pay Mo what he's asking. They'd be better off cutting him tomorrow if the choice was between cutting him and paying him that huge contract.
The progressive cap increase has only produced huge contracts on bad teams. Good teams take the cap increase and they acquire and retain more good players. They don't blow their wad on one or two guys on the mistaken notion that those guys are the key to a championship. If you don't play QB you aren't the key to a championship you're just a great supporting piece and you don't pay great supporting pieces like they're the key to everything. If Mo leaves the Jets will still have a good defensive line. They'll still have a good defense. None of that will matter until they raise the offense to a high enough level to make the defenses contributions worthwhile. Keeping Mo will just deprive the team of the ability to retain other players and add the needed pieces on offense. He wants too much money. He wants too much of the cap. You can't win with a few players like that, you need a lot of players who understand that it takes a team to win a championship. Every time the Jets fold to a player and give him a huge contract they move a step farther away from getting to the goal of a championship. Every other player in the room looks at that big contract and says: "oh, so that's how this works. Well I can't wait until I get mine." That's how you get players negotiating for each other through the press instead of encouraging each other to come in and win a championship. Darrelle Revis set the tone for the current Jets lockerroom with his singlemindedness about getting the most money and extracting the top dollar for his services as the primary goal above all others. Now we have Mo. It has to begin to end somewhere or we're going to be the poster boy for NFL franchises with a self-entitled locker room and no chance of ever putting together a big year as a result of that. Unfortunately the guy who is giving us the issue now is a really good guy who is hard to dislike. If Richardson was holding out under these circumstances 90% of the fan base would be looking to run him out of town. It's the same thing. Mo's a nice guy but the money he's looking for just isn't justifiable if the goal for the Jets is to win a championship. Sign him to a huge deal and we will lock in the Jets and their current young stars to years of this crap with no chance of getting around it. Given the number of high picks we've spent on defense we can't afford that. We can't have Revis turn into Mo turn into Richardson turn into Pryor turn into Williams. That's just death to our chances to really compete for championship.
Just like you need a player that can lift the Jets to great heights, you need someone that can hold it together also. In any sport, having a team full of stars never really equates to a championship. I think of Mo has an elite glue guy and glue guys are essential to any roster. Glue guys are just as important as stars. I never called Mo the key, I called him an integral piece of the defense, no doubt in my mind he holds it together. The key will always be the QB. It's not Mo's fault we haven't gotten to a SB, and I don't think it's the defense's fault either. Jets finally operated a modern day NFL offense a year ago that was the problem before. You can't win in today's league drafting project players in the second round. You don't win drafting Geno Smith's [whom I believe some said was a Chad Pennington level prospect]. Watt was worth the check, so will be Cox and the players I marked as bold, none of them stopped the team from acquiring better players.
Jets need to right the wrongs they did and reset the expectations in terms of contracts. Someone will pay the price and IMO that will be Revis and Sheldon. Revis should be gone in two years, and Sheldon, we should look to trade him next season. You are sending the wrong message to pay Sheldon and let Mo leave. This is more then $$$ this is a culture you are establishing.
None of those guys were worth the money. Watt got it because he's a great marketable talent who is essentially his own brand. He's over 20 sacks most seasons and he does other things that no other DL does, with an insane number of batted passes and even a red zone threat for the offense. There is zero chance that Cox is worth what the Eagles just committed too. He's not an irreplaceable talent and they're not going to win more with him on the roster minus the players who will now not be on the roster because he's so expensive. Again, point to the people who have actually been worth the huge deals. They just aren't out there. You're fantasizing about something for which the evidence is clear at this point. Huge deals are really bad for NFL teams that aren't already on the cusp of a championship for other reasons. Even for those teams the benefits are doubtful, although now and then you can add a great player as the last piece of the puzzle and get over the top. If you sign your players to huge deals before you get to that cusp you can't even add the last piece because you won't have the cap space to sign him at that point.
I don't think the Jets will be able to afford to retain Richardson either. I just think they'll be smarter about trading him earlier in the process if he re-establishes a high level of value. I think the first guy the Jets might be able to retain is Pryor, but they will not be able to do that if they give Mo his bonanza. Because then Pryor will want his when it comes due and we'll be in this crappy situation all over again. The path for the Jets at this point probably involves trading Mo cheap in training camp and then letting Richardson go in 2017 if he re-establishes value and then signing Pryor in 2017 before he gets near his walk year. We're very deep in the muck here at this point. We've got to start digging our way out sooner or we're going to get buried later. BTW, you can't reset expectations while giving Mo a huge deal. A huge deal for Mo right now reinforces expectations for the other players no matter what we do with Revis and Richardson. Revis won't matter because he's over 30 and post-prime and nothing that happens with him in terms of the contract going away will mean anything to a 26 or 27 year old player going into their second deal.
JJ Watt lines up against the worst lineman each and every snap, he's an athletic freak, but let's be serious, does he open up chances for anyone else? Good for JJ Watt beating up the league's shitty guards and tackles. Mo gets a nice # of batted passes as well, he has freakish long arms. Mo will even get you an interception every now and then too. Don't discount what Mo does on the field. My point is you can shell out a big contract and still make your football team better and I pointed out several teams that improved with that big contract on the roster. Bucs, Jags, Rams and Eagles will be passing us if we can't retain our young elite talent. If they didn't pass us yet, they already did. This isn't fantasizing, this is actually happening. Ask yourself this. Which roster would you rather have? Jets / Rams / Eagles or Bucs? Which roster is closest to winning?
Then the Jets will never win with this mind-set of letting great players leave. We can reset it if we resign Mo and let Sheldon walk. We are setting the expectation that if you come in, work hard and stay out of trouble you will be paid. Someone has to pay the price. You cannot let Sheldon AND Mo go, you need to sign one of the two. If you let both go, then you are going to be worse off, because you cannot replace that production that easily. This would add to the list of potential great Jets that left the team during or before their prime. We will be sitting here in 15 years while Mo or Sheldon get a gold jacket on another team like the Raiders. Mo, Leonard, Pryor, Maudlin, Lee, and Jenkins should be our defensive core going forward.
If the disagreement is just about guaranteed money, I think the Jets should pony up and give it to him. He's pretty much the best player we have on defense and he's home grown. Locker room leaders and well behaved players are the guys you generally want to keep around. It's easy to default to Williams and Richardson, but I'd love to see how well they do without big Mo up there. The only risk with guaranteed money, is injury, but Mo seems like the type of player that will last long and live up to his contract. Unless his demands are outrageous, the Jets should pay him what he wants or at least come close. He's not worth JJ watt / Suh money, but he's not that far off.
Details on Fletcher Cox's contract [by year]: http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/philadelphia-eagles/positional/defensive-tackle/ 2016 - Cox's deal takes up 4.98% 2017 - Cox's deal takes up 5.04% 2018 - Cox's deal takes up to 10.54% So no, Mo would not take up 10 percent of the cap space season in and season out as provided by some users here. Here's the issue at 2018: 2018 Spotrac has the Eagles already 14.6 Million over the projected team salary cap. Not only is the projection too low, here are the players that more than likely will not be on the Eagles roster: Jason Peters (11M) Connor Barwin (10m) Also to note, the Eagles normally do a good job with their cap and have never really been under cap hell with their GM Lurie. That deal I think will work fine for their best defensive player. Cox is one of the best interior lineman in the league.
