Obviously the more good players you have every year the harder it is to stay under the salary cap?

& obviously the Patriots put a lot of value into organizational depth & not being screwed if a couple guys get injured because they expect to compete every single year.

The problem with a Chandler Jones contract isn't the one year, it's what happens in 4 years when you are paying him to go away or if he gets hurt & you don't have enough depth everywhere to deal with it.

Raiders don't exactly have the too many good players problem, though.

Well in just tip the cap plays--the bucs read option with fitzpatrick, I don't blame cam jordan for taking the back as fitz is reading him and I wouldn't expect ryan fitzpatrick read option either, then marcus williams gets plowed over by ryan fitzpatrick.

Don't know how you'd expect going in to gameplan against a ryan fitzpatrick read option either, but god marcus williams you had a quarterback plow you into the end zone ffs. Cam Newton might be the only QB in the league that your coach wouldn't be mad if he did that to you. (and that's just one of many bad plays he had that game, saints D was just AIDS all game).

Not even the most impressive touchdown run of Fitz's career.

http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-game-h...yard-touchdown

I love Fitz, he has Peterman to Favre range in any given game.

lol this is the truth. So much fun and ridiculously frustrating to watch him in the Bills.

the fitzmagic sure was fun to watch, but I suspect it won't be quite as magical against the Eagles defense

I cant stand Wilson and he might be the biggest weirdo OAT, but I don't think putting Rustle in a group with Flacbert and Dalton is accurate.

they're lucky he's a company man... imagine Rustle behind a real o-line. ****, even top-10ish would be enough

You're absolutely right that any one player can be fit into any situation, but I strongly disagree with the overall point. That's focusing on one tree rather than the forest. The Chandler Jones - Stephon Gilmore thing is a great example, you're right that they could have afforded both players in 2017 with creative cap management but they had just $3mm in cap space left with just Gilmore and $7mm this year. What other players would they have had to cut either in 2017 or 2018 (or 2019/2020) to afford Jones, too? Those decisions become due at some point. The teams that have had the most sustained success over the last couple of decades (Patriots and Steelers and I'd say the Ravens even with the Flacco contract) are the ones that manage the cap the harshest. When a player is let go, how that money is used matters in the calculation of whether letting them go is a smart move.

I know they love Harmon and wouldn't do it. He was outstanding for them last year - his interception rate is pretty absurd. Those 3 are basically starters in their system.

1) why couldn't they just get creative and sign Chandler Jones and Stephon Gilmore?

2) yeah, of course that's what they do. Just look at last year's transactions. Do you think they traded Garrapolo and Cooks bc they thought they could easily replace those players with draft picks, or bc they couldn't keep them all under the cap? To a lesser extent same question with Nate Solder (and others) - I doubt they were psyched to roll the dice at left tackle but they couldn't just creative contract their way into a solution

I mean, my point in the Jones-Gilmore thing is more that Jones is arguably a more valuable player and it makes more sense to keep him, though I guess it does make sense to get a pick and then sign someone else. They traded Jones a full year before they signed Gilmore; it's not like they knew Gilmore would become available and sign with them. Uncertainty about where you might actually be able to spend the money is another reason it's good to lock up very good players at important positions when you can.

I chose Harmon because he's listed as the backup on the depth chart. If you want to choose Patrick Chung, or even better, Jason McCourty, or Lawrence Guy, then fine. Point is I think the difference between Clayborn and Jones is bigger than the difference between replacing a few of those other guys with veteran-minimum guys or rookie contracts.

1)I mean, they probably could have. The Saints do stuff like this all the time, their frequent misses on the actual players they sign notwithstanding.

2)Cooks is quite different from Jones, given that he's a WR (less important position) who was headed into his option year and going to be overpaid as a result. And they got more for him than they did for Jones. Garoppolo is a strange example to cite given all the rumored circumstances surrounding his trade and how cheaply they let him go. Solder I'll give you, but even then, it's a calculus-- is player X worth Y salary cap / cash figure? The Patriots are pretty ruthless in that calculus, but I still think Chandler Jones is worth his cap number.

Anyway, the whole genesis of this discussion was Khalil Mack, and I just think it's important to retain star players at the critical positions in football, and that that's also probably the best use of money and cap room.

Nath I'm really just saying you can't have it both ways. Say "but even then, it's a calculus-- is player X worth Y salary cap / cash figure? The Patriots are pretty ruthless in that calculus" and ALSO "I don't think the cap matters as much as most fans".

If it didn't matter much then why do the Pats have to be ruthless in this calculus? They should need to do very very little if the cap wasn't a big deal. Surely it would be easier to just pay everyone.

Bad teams don't have to worry as much about the cap because they don't have any good players they need to give their money to. Good teams need to worry about the cap & the sustainability of their roster.

In my first post on this, I said I was fine if someone comes down that the Jones trade was a bad move, even factoring Gilmore in. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I'm open to just signing Jones being the better move. *

I just know that Gilmore (or if you don't want to attach a specific player, just think of that $16.5 AAV salary slot) has to be factored into the trade - they didn't just trade Chandler Jones for a 2nd round pick, and the Raiders didn't just trade Mack for picks. There's value in cap space, as ethereal as it may seem at the time of the trade. The Patriots used it to add players that they wouldn't have added had Jones been kept. I'm betting the Raiders will, too.

Patrick Chung is pretty good now! He was my most hated Patriot in his first go-around here. One of the interesting things that Belichick has talked about a couple of times is how they simply used Chung wrong in his first stint.

* - my bet is the Jones trade wasn't just due to on field production, walking shirtless into a police station high as hell before a playoff game didn't help.

Raiders have already cut their 2016 & 2017 2nd round picks this off-season, though, so I'm sure they will have lots of players they need to pay money to.

Well, that is the national consensus. Before week 1, both ESPN and the Bleacher Report had Miami dead last at number 32 in their NFL Power Rankings. (Miami has moved up to 24 & 28 respectively, after last week's 27-20 win over the Titans.)

Interestingly, the local media has a much higher regard of their talent and their prospects this season, with the consensus being that they are no worse than a middle-of-the-pack 7-9 to 9-7 team, or maybe even a playoff contender.

While it isn't unusual for local media to think (or at least write) that the team they cover will do better than national reporters or columnists, I've never seen such a wide gulf between local and national prognostications. After all, I'm sure no beat writer in Cleveland predicted that the Browns were going to make the playoffs last year when they were the consensus worst team in the league.

Josh Allen oozes so much confidence that it’s going to congeal around his base to bounce pass rushers off him

Josh Allen has an exoskeleton that is simply calcified confidence from all the blue cheese he eats on his wings

I don't think they have to. They choose to do that rather than use clever accounting tricks so that they don't end up wasting tons of dead cap room if they make a mistake. But they also, as I said, fill the roster with middle-salary veterans that I don't necessarily think they have to, either, so it's not like they're hoarding cap room.

And again, we're getting back to Chandler Jones. I just think their calculus was wrong on that one. Nate Solder is two years older than Jones now-- four years older than when the Pats decided to move on from Jones-- not as good, and plays a less important (though not by a whole lot) position. Meanwhile, their annual cap figures and compensation are quite similar. It's not hard to say that keeping one player would be the right move and keeping the other wouldn't.

"Accounting tricks" is just code for "we'll just screw ourselves over more down the road". That's fine if you want to compete occasionally, then rebuild. That's not what the Patriots have been going for the past 17 years, though.

BB thinks it's important to have those veterans & that depth. I think it's hard to question the overall philosophy, even if it may have led to a wrong choice on Jones. The police station incident makes him a very large risk, though.

This dude on Chiefsplanet makes pretty good videos - always ending with a Count Zarth cameo.

You're literally saying "they have a choice to make: they can do things the smart way or the dumb way, and they chose to do things the smart way". Which is... Accurate but also not really a logical end to the argument of "the cap isn't that important"

As for the middle priced veterans thing - you're most likely wrong. Stars and scrubs doesn't really work in the NFL.

Wasn't Chandler Jones a problem and that was a reason they didn't want to sign him? Didn't he have some weird issue at police station?

Heard on the radio that Eagles/Falcons, Bears/Packers, and (lol) Cowboys/Panthers each did better ratings than all 4 NBA Finals games this year

NFL still the king

Awesome.

You can get excited. He's the real deal.

Seems like the pats do this every year. Seahawks did this with legion of boom + wilson + a few at least pretty good DL and LOL about everywhere else.

Rams right now.

Okay Dream Team in Philly but that's because the studs they signed didn't fit what their team was trying to do so that ended up being silly as hell.