Jason La Canfora @JasonLaCanfora Reply Retweet Favorite · Open Raiders have informed S Tyvon Branch he will be franchised. #insideslant There goes that option.
We need a safety. Period. Leonard is a Chrebet type playing at safety. Always overachieving and Smith? Meh.... We need a safety.
I feel like I say this 10 times a day on here. Cap space. Cap space. Cap space. We barely have any even with the clearing of DBricks cap hit. We need around 5 million to sign our rookies, resign Pouha and Maybin, then try and bring in another WR if we don't draft one at 16. Even if we restructure to death Griffin and Branch will be making about 10 million combined per year, we dont have that type of money plain and simple. So for you and everyone else who wants to go sign the top guys out there, we have an extremely slim chance at doing so, and the faster that is learned the easier this offseason will be.
Keep Smith Smith is a good player in certain situations. He is great against the run, just blows in coverage. I'd keep him as a backup. I'd also re-sign Leonard, but not for too much. He may get hurt again. That being said, the Jets need to bring in at least one new safety, really two though. Leonard and Smith are good guys, but there's better out there.
I think it would be best to keep Smith as a backup and find a replacement for him. And maybe re-sign Leonard and let him compete for his job with some other guys, maybe Pool or another outside player.
Pretty bummed about Branch being tagged... I think we could have locked him up for 3 years at a reasonable cap figure, and he would have done a very good job in our defense... the silver lining, though, is that the Raiders were already more than 20 million over the cap before this move. I wonder if run DMC might be available this offseason... keep in mind that they are in desperate need of a CB, so they might be interested in Wilson or Cro.
