I appreciate the work and thought that went into this post, but there are a few points that need to be made to give proper context. First, when talking about roster management, you have to move away from the dated idea of starters and backups. In any given game, your "starting" FB is likely to play less snaps then your #3 WR or #2 TE, so how are you suppose to justify which ones deserve "starting" money? Second, you have to take into account rookie contracts. With the exception of the top few picks in the draft, no one is gonna average $5M a year in their first contract. The new CBA mandates that all rookie contracts are 4 years, so theoretically a team should always have four drafts worth of players who are still on their rookie deals. I think this would be a good place to start, how many contributors do you have on your team that are still on cheap rookie deals? By my count the Jets have 10 guys that I consider to be locks on the roster next year. Wilson, Coples, Wilkerson, Kerley, Ellis, Davis, McKnight, Powell, Ducasse, and Hill all combine to account for only $10.8M, and on top of that they will have another rookie class coming in that should only account for a couple million more. Obviously it's impossible to know exactly how much you'll get from that group of players, but it's the job of management to set their expectation levels and figure out what they need to spend the remaining $115M on, but now they only have approx 40 spots to account for. Cromartie, Sanchez, Harris, and Holmes account for $49M, obviously that's way too much for the caliber of players that they are, but the Jets really aren't in a position to do anything about it. From this perspective, this is the grossest mismanagement of resources for the 2013 season. Now they have $66M for 36 roster spots, and suddenly things get a little tighter. $20M is currently assigned to Brick and Mangold, but as I stated earlier, those numbers can go down quite a bit. They will also have around five or six million in dead money to account for, which makes things all the tougher. At this point they have between $40-50M for 34 roster spots, before you deal with the biggest unknown variable, Revis. As it stands, he accounts for $9M, but that number could go up or down, or he could even theoretically be traded (I consider that unlikely.) But even under best case scenario, they are looking at $45M for 33 roster spots. However, the only way they get that much is if they push a ton of money into future years, which is how they got into this mess in the first place. What all this basically means, is that the Jets aren't in cap jail or hell, they are in full blown rebuilding mode. They made a good push for a few years, created a window for a championship, didn't win it, and now the window is closed and they are left with a weak core of players. They have to start all over again, and the question is whether or not the current regime is gonna be the ones making the decisions.
I didn't give a specific cap figure to a specific position. As such, you can safely assume, from the previous posting, that a FB will most likely see a backup money (500k, from the assumption) while whoever gets the majority of the snaps out of TE/WR will see that 5M figure. This is a very good point - and another illuminating point of why T-Bomb is such a colossal failure. This simply means that, if Jets drafted well, then coached them up well: 1. The team will be young mostly all across the board. 2. The cap situation will be very manageable. At the current state, Jets drafted 16 out of possible 24 in the top 4 rounds during the past few years. Imagine you filled that 8 spots with free agents, that are making fringe money. That situation will always present talent problem since free agents are paid at the market value - meaning, a draft pick that gets paid as much will always perform better. Cross Wilson off the list - he's getting starter money for being a fringe player. Seriously, you can spend 1st round pick better than a slot cover cornerback. After knocking Wilson out, you will realize that: the rest will make some 6M combined. The entire secondary (2 CBs/FS/SS) should cost about 16M or so. Cro + Revis will easily go over that range. Ok. Revis is the very best corner in the NFL - so what? Paying him 14M is not what you should do as a manager of the team, if you know what that means to the rest of the roster. Dumping another extra 8M on Harris is the killer however. But T-Bomb is the genius. Whatever model they chose, it does not allow sustained success year in, year out.
You forgot to put a smiley face so people know your joking. Otherwise anyone with a brain knows your a moron.
I agree with most of what you said, but I think you're being too harsh on Wilson. I understand he isn't as good as you hoped he would be, considering he was a first round pick, but he's still a decent corner. More importantly (for the sake of this discussion) he only costs them $2M against the cap next year. Considering how often they are in sub-packages (>50% snaps) I think that's pretty good value.
There is a reason that we did not address specific positions in the offseason that clearly needed to be addressed, and it is because we are in cap trouble. There is a reason that guys like Bart Scott and Calvin Pace are on this team still, it is because we are in cap trouble. We do not have a very talented team right now and that is because we have been in cap trouble the last couple years and I see no signs of that fact going away this offseason either. How can anyone say that our cap situation has been fine the last couple of years? That is absurd. Could you guys imagine if we actually got Namdi in that offseason we went all in on him? We would have been completely fucked right now.
It is not about whether Wilson is decent or not. 1. Jets had LB problem brewing since forever. And the DL AND safety problem. At that time, Jets already had Revis and Cro at the CB spot. So what is the most sensible thing to do? Draft yet another CB? (It is not like Jets did not have option at these positions either.) 2. As br4d once pointed out, that draft had [drafting for yesterday's game] written all over it - if I might add, with 'panic' mixed in just right too. I have harped about it times and again - Jets cannot generate pressure from their front 7, and it is hurting in the back end. Obviously, somebody up there saw it differently, and decided one slot cover will make all the difference. Having Wilson during that pivotal Colts game MIGHT have made the difference (I still doubt if it would.) See how well that turned out. In the meantime, Jets have pressing needs at OL/S/LB position. [And that Jets drafted a project player with 2nd round pick is a bonus. Jets could have picked Brandon Spikes instead of Ducasse and get immediate return, in other words. Defend that.] 3. This is my main gripe. You DO NOT draft sub-package player with top four rounds. Jets did just that during that year. Colossal stupidity? Yes in my book.
I don't have enough posts to post a link. Its on cbssports website under his blog. It looks like another thread is referencing it as well.
Here's the link to the La-Canfora story, pretty brutal assessment. http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/blog/j...ck-of-discipline-dim-jets-offseason-prospects
You cannot be over the cap. You must be under the cap as of the first day of the league year and then remain under it. I'm not sure what the penalty would be for getting a franchise in a situation where they could not get under the cap but I assume it would be loss of draft picks somehow. That's the usual currency that the league fines in when a competitive advantage is at stake.
NFL has a hard salary cap & salary floor. You can't go beyond the cap & simply pay a penalty fee like the Lakers/Knicks do in the NBA. There's also a minimum amount that needs to be spent on salaries, so you can't put out a whole roster of NFL minimum salaries & pocket the money.
As others stated, I don't think we will be in cap hell, but we will have more holes than we can fill with our remaining money. Some of these holes will be created by getting under the cap, but they will be removing players that need removing. The cap will make filling every need difficult, but it shouldn't hold us back completely which would be hell. Most likely, the QB hole will remain empty next year because of our terrible QB moves regardning starters/backups
The normal definition of cap hell is that you must cut good players because they cost too much against the cap. You'd rather cut other guys and keep the good players but the cap dictates that you must cut the good ones instead. The Jets are in kind of a unique position next year because they have some clear cuts that they want to make and can make. Those are the guys they'd like to have cut this year but could not. They'll finally get the chance to cut them next year. The problem is that they don't have a lot of players under contract at affordable numbers next year. They're stuck with another wave of un-cuttable players that they'd like to let go but can't. They don't really have enough cap space to sign good players alongside those un-cuttables (for the third year in a row) so they're going to be adding bargain basement players instead (for the third year in a row.) That's kind of a unique form of cap hell. You don't have to cut good players but that's because you're paying a bunch of schmos like they were good players and in some cases making guarantees in the process. The Revis situation is going to make us all cry at some point or another. Some of us will be crying because his new deal will be a cap-anchor for a long time. Others of us may be crying because the Jets can't get him to sign that deal with all the chaos going on around the team. It's really ugly out there and it's probably going to get worse before it gets better.
Don't mistake what I'm saying as defending any of Tannenbaum's choices, and certainly not with the way he handled the 2010 draft. All I'm saying, as it pertains to the 2013 cap situation, is that having a player the caliber of Kyle Wilson taking up $2M in cap space is not bad value. Could they have gotten a better player with that pick? Absolutely, and it's fair to criticize them for that. I'm just saying, Kyle Wilson is not the reason for the Jets' fiscal woes. As for your last point, this probably isn't the best thread to discuss it, but I completely disagree. Most teams play sub-packages more often then their "base" D, and drafting strategies have to account for that. Obviously you'd like to draft a three-down player, but you also have to be realistic in understanding that not every pick is going to develop into such a high-quality player. I think it's interesting to see you advocate drafting Spikes, but up until this year he couldn't play in sub-packages, and even now struggles in coverage. Why is a two-down run stuffing player more important than a player who plays exclusively in sub-packages?
Some of you are so retarded. You keep saying Tanny will get us out of this...he always does. right? Well, he gets us under the cap with a total shit team!!!! Having to have about a half dozen players who dont even belong in the NFL. Another half dozen starting who should be back-ups and on top of that, he fileds the least deep team in the league. Yea, real cap genius. You guys simply dont get it
