The Steelers just re-signed their '11 first round pick DE Cam Heyward. He was drafted one spot behind Mo, they play the same position. Mo is definitely the better player of the two but he probably doesn't earn MUCH more money at this point. Heyward got 59 mil. for 6 years, just under 10 mil. per year. When the season ended I thought Mo was worth (compared to the players of his caliber) around 12-14 mil. per year and this extension by the Steelers kind of confirm it. I don't know why they can't get a deal done unless Mo is looking for Watt type money or the Jets feel like he doesn't deserve more than 10+ mil. per year. Both assumptions would be silly. So we know what Mo WON'T get, anything close to 16 mil. We also know he shouldn't make less than 11 mil. per year so what's the holdup? He's in the 12-13-14 mil. per year range, why can't they get like a 5 year, 70 mil. contract done? Or 4 years, 60 mil. something along those lines? One side has to be unreasonable. For comparison: Watt: 16.7 mil. M. Williams: 16 mil. Pierre-Paul: 14.8 mil. (tag) Quinn: 14.2 mil. C. Johnson: 12.6 mil. C. Long: 12 mil. Hardy: 11.3 mil.
It's because the new regime wants to personally see all the guys on the dl, and wait a year to give out a possible long term deal.
What motivation do the Jets have to lock him up long term and pay him more at the moment? He's under contract and they can franchise him when that's up. At that point they'll have a really good evaluation of the other two first round DE's on the roster so they can make a good informed decision on which ones are worth going forward with.
In negotiations who talks first usually loses. Mo seems to have talked first, probably underestimating the position the new jets brass has in place.
The evaluation of Sheldon can't be good right now as he's 1 toke away from a year long suspension. I guess if the Jets FO wants to bet on Mo Wilk, then that is their prerogative, but with a revamped secondary - I think it's an awful idea to do that and I believe Mo will have a career year and ultimately raise his value even more. The Jets will lose this gamble, I can promise you that. In a lesser way, it reminds me of the Justin Houston issue - Chiefs let him bet on himself and now he's got a 100M dollar contract. If I can sign Mo for less now, then I am doing it.
If Mo has a career year the Jets will be playing deep into January 2016. It's probably worth letting him play on the option just to keep him on a path towards that kind of year. The Jets have 3 3-4 DE's right now. Nothing is going to change that. Handing any of them a $100M contract right now would be insane. Handing any of them a contract near top of the market would be insane. What if the Jets give Mo a huge deal and the injuries turn out to be a chronic condition? What if he just gets hurt like so many NFL players do? There's no incentive for the Jets to set themselves up to get clobbered by a bad break. If Mo was looking for a "I want to be a Jet for my career" type contract then it's a no-brainer. That contract would get him some real guarantees and a nice salary but wouldn't threaten to break the Jets cap if it went sour. BTW, as of right now the cap numbers for 3-4 DE's are as follows: J.J. Watt $16.67M Cameron Jordan $11M Calais Campbell $11M Corey Liuget $10.25M Cameron Heyward $9.875M Where Mo slots in on that scale is at $12M. He is much closer to Jordan and Campbell than he is to Watt.
I never said to hand out 100M contracts; or even to give him top of the market value. We have no idea how much money Mo is asking for, what I can tell you is Mo wasn't happy after Cameron Jordan from the Saints got that 5 yr 55M dollar contract; if we want to play this game - it's possible Mo wants cash around that ball-park and that's 11M / yr which is great value for Mo. Injuries are injuries - there are clauses in contracts and such that allow teams to get out of situations such as those I am sure. You can't determine future injuries, things happen, that shouldn't stop the Jets from resigning their best players.
As you said, we have no idea what he's asking for but we know that two straight GM's have slow-rolled things after talking to him and and his agents. They're definitely talking and nothing is getting done. Guarantees are guarantees. If they're not guaranteed for injury they're not guarantees. It's possible that the Jets are now concerned about the turf toe injury that Mo sustained in the middle of the year. Lots of NFL players have this type of injury and in about 50% of them it is a persistent condition after the original injury. This according to a study done specifically on NFL players in 2009. http://lermagazine.com/article/managing-turf-toe-in-football-players
Jets aren't handling this well IMO, we shouldn't have given Revis all of that cash. He's going to get his cash, better off that we give it to him then another team. Turf Toe can be an issue especially for surgery, but c'mon Bobby Wagner had turf toe last season too and well, he looked pretty good come playoff time. I understand the concern though. Are the Seahawks going to let Wagner go?
The 50% figure actually comes from a 1994 study not a 2009 study so it's likely that medical options are better at this point. It was a study of players up to and including 5 years after the initial injury. I disagree on the notion that the Jets are better off if we give him the money right now, unless there's a real payoff for doing that. I really like him as a player. He's become one of my favorite Jets of the last decade. That said, when you get to a certain age you just root for the laundry and I'm there now. I'd love to see him play his entire career as a Jet. I just don't want to be in a position where something can go badly wrong early on and that's what signing him to a huge guaranteed deal right now would do for us. It would be all downside until he had a great All-Pro year and so far he hasn't really done that. Food for thought: Mo's 2nd Team All-Pro season in 2013 was 10.5 sacks. Cameron Jordan had 12.5 sacks as a 3-4 DE the same season. Who would have been the All-Pro that year if Jordan played in the NY media market and Mo played in New Orleans?
Turf Toe can still be a problem as you mentioned before, I guess we will see when TC starts. See here's my thing with the Wilkerson issue - there is a real payoff and that's not allowing his value to sky-rocket when he's part of a defense that has some really strong quality players on each level of the defense. Let's say Mo gets 15 sacks this season along with 2 interceptions, 5 FFs and a touchdown. How much does his value go up? Instead of talking potentially 60M for the contract, now it's at 75-80M. Is it worth it to wait? I personally don't believe in betting against players with strong motors and something to prove. Again, see Justin Houston's situation the past 3 seasons - Houston is a better player no doubt, but the Chiefs bet against Houston and for Houston it paid off. I think Mo is an integral part of this team, Mo is my favorite player on the Jets so maybe I have some bias; but there's no doubt, he makes everyone on that D-Line better. Those are the players you keep, you can't find players like that all of the time. You can't name many other players that are more versatile then Mo Wilk. His versatility alone is important for the Jets. You just don't let players like that go. Mo was a better player then Jordan that yr. He had an interception, more tackles and pro-football-reference mentions that Wilk's value to his team was higher then Jordan's [AV stat] so it makes sense to have Wilk as a 2nd team all-pro for all of his contributions. Actually Mo's AV stat is higher then Jordan in each season. http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/W/WilkMu00.htm http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/J/JordCa00.htm
At this point, do the Jets even have the cap space to sign Mo? I don't think they do. Initially, I believed that Mo should have been re-signed long term prior to FA, but that didn't happen for whatever reason. Not signing him earlier could wind up biting them in the butt if he has a monster season, but then he may never have had that monster season if it weren't for the motivation of showing the Jets that he's worth a new contract. I don't blame them for wanting to see what he has and if he can step his game up a level. Especially now that they have Williams in the mix as well, they're probably in no rush to re-sign Mo. With Williams on board and with Sheldon's being suspended, they have more power and control than ever with regards to Mo and the salary situation. Now if Williams struggles as a rookie, things could change dramatically if Mo has that monster season, but I guess they're willing to take that risk.
Jets currently have $5,268,697 cap space left. It appears the Jets do not have the cap space for 2016 as according to spotrac, they will be over the cap next year as of now. They will need to restructure deals to get under the cap [Mainly Brick, due to count 14M on the cap - that should be slashed in half; or you find a replacement and clear up about 10M]. Revis freaking takes 11.33% of the cap in 2016 - unbelievable.
It will be easier for Mo to have a monster season this year with this enormous D-line and a more than competent secondary behind him.
I think if we backload the deal we could actually save a bunch of money this year because Mo is set to make 7 mil. because of the 5th year option. Dez Bryant for instance with his new monster deal makes only 3 mil. this year (salary). All his money is heading his direction towards the end. That's usually the best way to get somebody under contract from the teams perspective, but players obviously want as much money as possible as early as possible - in the first 2-3 years. Maybe that's the holdup.
That's a good point. We will be in the clear after next season and some restructures, so this would be the best way to go about it. Hopefully the guarantees are in the same ball-park between parties.
The Jets could backload a deal for Mo and still come in comfortably under the cap this season. That would be vet minimum salary plus a big bonus plus guarantees in year two and three. The problem is that teams that go that route with their players generally wind up regretting it when the bill comes due. The other problem is that if a real QB somehow becomes available in camp for any reason the Jets don't want to be completely out of the bidding due to the cap situation. Here's how you make a long-term deal at a high price affordable under the 2015 cap: Current cap space available is $5,462,395. That includes Mo's number of $6,969,000. So the total to work with from the perspective of signing Mo to a new deal is probably something like $8,431,395. That would leave the Jets with $4M in space for emergencies and unforseen contingencies that arise. So the Jets could sign Mo to a vet minimum salary for the year of $745,000 and give him a $30M bonus over a 5 year deal and guarantee year 2 at $7M and guarantee year 3 at $11M. At that point they've handed him $30M in cash and $48M overall in guarantees with cap numbers of $6.745M, $13M and $17M over the next 3 years. The problem is that if Mo gets hurt or doesn't play up to the contract 2016 and 2017 become very painful to deal with. 2016 would be a tight year on the cap for sure and the Jets would have to make significant adjustments to deal with Mo's higher cap figure. However his cap figure next year is going to be huge if the Jets have to franchise him anyway. Best bet at this point if this type of deal was going to happen is that the Jets would do it next year instead of franchising Mo. Whether he'd cooperate at that point or not is an open question.
