Howie at it again: restructures Cox deal

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, pallidrone said:

That 'stud FA' scenario is becoming less and less of an option every year because teams are doing the same things cap wise as the Eagles and are less likely to let those type of players hit the market.

FA is now a place where you either overpay for mediocre talent, get old vets on a 1-2 year deal at a good price, find talent that had bad years sign one year contracts to make themselves more money later on, or unknown talent with the hope of finding a gem.

Brandon Brooks, Malcom Jenkins, Rodney McLeod and Nick Foles disagree with this take.

[pallidrone]

12 minutes ago, downundermike said:

Brandon Brooks, Malcom Jenkins, Rodney McLeod and Nick Foles disagree with this take.

Not a single one of these guys were 'studs' when they entered FA.

Brandon Brooks was not a great player in Houston to the point that they signed Jeff Allen who they thought was a better player and he almost retired instead of going into FA. If not for Stoutland, he probably would not be the player he is.

Rodney McLeod was undrafted FA who was as special teams player for the Rams that made it into the starting lineup. He was a good player, but was far from a stud when he entered FA.

Malcolm Jenkins was miscast as a CB for the Saints when he was drafted, did not play very well for them and entered FA as a huge question mark. In fact a lot of Eagles fans pissed and moaned about them signing him here and thought he was a waste of money.

Nick Foles is the poster child for a vet that gets on a 1-2 deal for a good price. He is not a stud in any way shape or form. If he was he would be a starting QB right now.

 

Not a single one of these guys were a Jevon Kearse or Asante Samuel type of player when they entered FA.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, pallidrone said:

Not a single one of these guys were 'studs' when they entered FA.

Brandon Brooks was not a great player in Houston to the point that they signed Jeff Allen who they thought was a better player and he almost retired instead of going into FA. If not for Stoutland, he probably would not be the player he is.

Rodney McLeod was undrafted FA who was as special teams player for the Rams that made it into the starting lineup. He was a good player, but was far from a stud when he entered FA.

Malcolm Jenkins was miscast as a CB for the Saints when he was drafted, did not play very well for them and entered FA as a huge question mark. In fact a lot of Eagles fans pissed and moaned about them signing him here and thought he was a waste of money.

Nick Foles is the poster child for a vet that gets on a 1-2 deal for a good price. He is not a stud in any way shape or form. If he was he would be a starting QB right now.

Brooks was ranked top 25 in FA's in 2016 ( remember there is only 32 teams )

McLeod was ranked as high as 15 ( remember there is only 32 teams )

 

You build a team through quality drafting and development, and then mix in free agent additions, including adding studs when available.

Shaq Barrett has been a monster in Tampa Bay since signing as a free agent.

The Honey Badger had a huge impact on the Chiefs Super Bowl team.

 

Yes, you do not build a team through free agency, but to say they have no impact is absurd.

You don't think a 24 year old safety like Jesse Bates would not have a huge impact for the Eagles as a 2022 free agent addition ??  Or Marcus Williams, 

[Guest]

@pallidrone, 2017 super bowl team, free agents / trade acquisitions.

Nick Foles, Nate Sudfeld, Jay Ajayi, LeGarrette Blount, Kenjon Barner, Alshon Jeffery, Torrey Smith, Brandon Brooks, Stefen Wisniewski, Bryan Braman, Timmy Jernigan, Chris Long, Nigel Bradham, Kamu Gruger Hill, Najee Goode, Ronald Darby, Malcolm Jenkins, Rodney McLeod, Corey Graham, Patrick Robinson, Donnie Jones, Jake Elliott, Rick Lovato

More than half of the starters in the Super Bowl acquired via FA or trade.

[pallidrone]

9 minutes ago, downundermike said:

Brooks was ranked top 25 in FA's in 2016 ( remember there is only 32 teams )

McLeod was ranked as high as 15 ( remember there is only 32 teams )

 

You build a team through quality drafting and development, and then mix in free agent additions, including adding studs when available.

Shaq Barrett has been a monster in Tampa Bay since signing as a free agent.

The Honey Badger had a huge impact on the Chiefs Super Bowl team.

 

Yes, you do not build a team through free agency, but to say they have no impact is absurd.

You don't think a 24 year old safety like Jesse Bates would not have a huge impact for the Eagles as a 2022 free agent addition ??  Or Marcus Williams, 

Where did I say that they have no impact? I said that there are no STUD FAs anymore.

There are no players that are multiple pro-bowl/all-pro players entering their prime hitting FA. Teams have become much smarter in using the tag, creative accounting to make them happy or trading the player off before they hit FA instead of letting them go for virtually nothing.

What you are left with is a bunch of mediocre players that are getting massive deals because they are the only ones available. Was Jonnu Smith really worth $50m? Was Golladay worth 4 years and $72 million?

The real impact with FA is when you find cheaper players later on that either have something to prove or you believe they are better then what their former team thought of them.

[Infam]

A drafted guy usually is cheaper and bonds better with a team that drafted him, but ultimately I don’t really care if we fill a position with a good drafted guy or FA.

As long as we add a good player, we’re fine.

[Godfather]

I expect either a Goedert or Sweat extension after this

[time2rock]

12 minutes ago, Godfather said:

I expect either a Goedert or Sweat extension after this

Or both.  

I also wouldn't completely rule out an Ertz extension.  He now knows his market value is no where near what he thought it would be.  The comments about wanting to retire an Eagle make me think a somewhat team friendly deal could be in the works for him.  

[Hawkeye]

1 hour ago, paco said:

There are quite a few posts that I want to reply to but I can only sneak this one in right now. 
 

Yes, everyone has dead cap. The question is how much.  When you have 10s of millions in dead cap, that’s cap space that could have been used to sign several depth players or pick up that stud FA to help put you over the top. 
 

Dead cap puts you at an disadvantage.  The question is, how much of an disadvantage 

I take your point but in the final analysis it's just an expression of cap space already in use for current players.  It's an accounting shell game specifically designed by the NFL to allow it's teams to borrow against future years under a hard cap.  Ideally, every deal would work out but teams need the flexibility to move money from year-to-year or the whole system would grind to a halt.  

I'm sure there's a formula for what percentage of the cap space in a given year should be allocated cleaning up previous deals but I don't know the economics of football well enough to know that it is. 

[Godfather]

4 minutes ago, time2rock said:

Or both.  

I also wouldn't completely rule out an Ertz extension.  He now knows his market value is no where near what he thought it would be.  The comments about wanting to retire an Eagle make me think a somewhat team friendly deal could be in the works for him.  

Not sure Howie will invest that much money at that spot. They have Jackson who they seem to like

[NOTW]

2 hours ago, downundermike said:

@NOTW let me know if this link works for you.  Been tracking the cap changes since March 4th when everyone was saying we would be fine because we have 73 million cap room in 2022.

The change is quite drastic.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tF3yanEJI265hP5FH6PVCZDmTt5QQxDye3gmz2wRy5s/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks.  

So, we know every NFL team has to stay under the cap regardless and always finds ways to do it. Howie in the past had a knack for spreading out cap hits and restructuring deals in ways that made all the contracts work well together and still have flexibility.  Despite the bad drafting, it was almost unanimous that fans would agree Howie was great at the cap side of things, and the way he would negotiate individual player contracts.

I think the problem which even Howie admits is when they won the SB and he tried to keep that core together.  He hurt them with bad contracts to Jeffrey and DeSean Jackson and those guys got paid to sit on IR while they had garbage at WR.  They held onto Jason Peters 2 or 3 seasons too long.  And he extended Brooks and Johnson too many years as they decline and have missed significant games to injury.

Extending/restructuring players like Goedert or Barnett who are younger and your future core is fine.  But extending aging/injury prone vets too long is not.  Then giving Wentz a $100m contract before he proved he could stay healthy and win a playoff game put them in a bad spot, then Howie had to "work his genius" to fix that problem, and keep fixing his own mistakes.  

If the Eagles are hell bent on keeping him he needs to just be Joe Banner again.  Finance, negotiate trades and contracts but have a VP of player personnel over the draft.  Part of the problem is they have no young talent to replace these guys especially on defense.  The only good pipeline they have is O line and I think it's because Stoutland and the scouts do such a good job telling him who to get in the mid to late rounds to develop.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Hawkeye said:

I take your point but in the final analysis it's just an expression of cap space already in use for current players.

This is 100% false.  It is money you can not spend because it is allocated to players not on the team.

Eagles have 33.82 million in money they can not spend for Carson Wentz to play for the Colts.

Eagles have 5.8 million in money they can not spend for DeSean Jackson to play for the Rams.

 

[Infam]

9 minutes ago, time2rock said:

Or both.  

I also wouldn't completely rule out an Ertz extension.  He now knows his market value is no where near what he thought it would be.  The comments about wanting to retire an Eagle make me think a somewhat team friendly deal could be in the works for him.  

For the right price, I'm actually all for it.

[Godfather]

4 minutes ago, downundermike said:

This is 100% false.  It is money you can not spend because it is allocated to players not on the team.

Eagles have 33.82 million in money they can not spend for Carson Wentz to play for the Colts.

Eagles have 5.8 million in money they can not spend for DeSean Jackson to play for the Rams.

 

Yuck

[time2rock]

17 minutes ago, Godfather said:

Not sure Howie will invest that much money at that spot. They have Jackson who they seem to like

I'm wondering if they don't extend Ertz instead of Goedert.  

[Bwestbrook36]

4 minutes ago, time2rock said:

I'm wondering if they don't extend Ertz instead of Goedert.  

How do you know they won't extend Dick Rodgers? Hmmm?? Smart guy!

[Hawkeye]

28 minutes ago, downundermike said:

This is 100% false.  It is money you can not spend because it is allocated to players not on the team.

Eagles have 33.82 million in money they can not spend for Carson Wentz to play for the Colts.

Eagles have 5.8 million in money they can not spend for DeSean Jackson to play for the Rams.

 

You're missing the point. 

Would you have preferred they kept Wentz which would have spread his cap charges through the 2024 season as planned?  Of course not. So they had to bite the bullet and accelerate all the amortized cap charges attached to his contract into 2021 resulting in the huge dead money charge but they have a clean slate on that one in 2022.

Again, the concept of dead money is flexibility.  The Eagles decided to eat the whole Wentz charge in one year which is an outlier.

[Perforator]

I think Howie is trying to beat the NFL record for most dead cap money ever. He came in second this year!

 

[mayanh8]

I don't think the restructure of the Cox deal was done as part of a grand plan that Howie has. It's a prudent move that creates flexibility this year if we end up needing it. If the Eagles end up not using it it'll be rolled into next year.

[Guest]

26 minutes ago, mayanh8 said:

I don't think the restructure of the Cox deal was done as part of a grand plan that Howie has. It's a prudent move that creates flexibility this year if we end up needing it. If the Eagles end up not using it it'll be rolled into next year.

Team had 18 million in combined 2021-2022 cap space before the Mailata extension and Cox restructure.

Mailata’s cap number will increase this year, and then he is added to next year.  If the Eagles end up with 3 first rounders next year, say the 5th, 15th and 25th pick, that carries a cap charge of almost 13 million.

This restructure was absolutely done out of necessity.

[Outlaw]

15 hours ago, Mike030270 said:

Donald has 6 consecutive years of All-Pro vs Cox 1 year. Definitely not the same levels

Umm, yeah…hence why I said what I said. Donald is in a different stratosphere all by himself among DTs. But yeah, thanks for affirming my statement while simultaneously seeming to be calling me out because of it?

[EazyEaglez]

18 hours ago, downundermike said:

Brandon Brooks, Malcom Jenkins, Rodney McLeod and Nick Foles disagree with this take.

Heck Hargrave was our best defensive lineman against the Falcons. 

[brkmsn]

6 hours ago, Outlaw said:

Umm, yeah…hence why I said what I said. Donald is in a different stratosphere all by himself among DTs. But yeah, thanks for affirming my statement while simultaneously seeming to be calling me out because of it?

Just because someone quotes you, does not mean they are "calling you out." Sometimes people quote a post to agree or add another point. It's pretty simple.

[Aerolithe_Lion]

1 hour ago, EazyEaglez said:

Heck Hargrave was our best defensive lineman against the Falcons. 

He was a stud, we outbid teams for him, and it was because he was a stud before even coming here

[pallidrone]

4 hours ago, Aerolithe_Lion said:

He was a stud, we outbid teams for him, and it was because he was a stud before even coming here

He was never an all pro and has never been to a pro bowl. He never led the league or was in the top ten (or even his position) in sacks, forces fumbles, or tackles - how is he a stud?

He was and still is a good player, nothing more.