2019 Free Agency Thread

[Forge]

 

That's why we just tag him 

[TecmoSuperJoe]

We should just let him walk. Using the franchise tag on a kicker seems like a waste of the resource. He's not coming off like he wants to be here anyway. Just draft a kicker late. Or get one undrafted. Or monitor the AAF.

[Forge]

54 minutes ago, PapaShogun said:

We should just let him walk. Using the franchise tag on a kicker seems like a waste of the resource. He's not coming off like he wants to be here anyway. Just draft a kicker late. Or get one undrafted. Or monitor the AAF.

It's one of the most commonly tagged positions. There's nobody else to even consider tagging, and the low cost of the tag on the kicker makes it a no brainer.

If you have playoff aspirations, you don't dump a kicker who has been one of the three most accurate kickers in the NFL the past two years and one of the most accurate over the past twenty to take a chance on some random, especially a late rounder or udfa. That makes no sense, especially over 4 million dollars... Or what I like to call, "the amount we deposited in Jonathan Cooper's bank account last year to never play a down for us"

Ask Chicago about reliable kickers when you're trying to get to and win in the playoffs

[y2lamanaki]

10 minutes ago, Forge said:

Ask Chicago about reliable kickers when you're trying to get to and win in the playoffs

Or we could always let Gould walk, sign Parkey to a 4-year deal, and get the exact Chicago Bears experience firsthand. 

[Forge]

10 minutes ago, y2lamanaki said:

Or we could always let Gould walk, sign Parkey to a 4-year deal, and get the exact Chicago Bears experience firsthand. 

Blair Walsh is a free agent too

[TecmoSuperJoe]

2 hours ago, Forge said:

It's one of the most commonly tagged positions. There's nobody else to even consider tagging, and the low cost of the tag on the kicker makes it a no brainer.

If you have playoff aspirations, you don't dump a kicker who has been one of the three most accurate kickers in the NFL the past two years and one of the most accurate over the past twenty to take a chance on some random, especially a late rounder or udfa. That makes no sense, especially over 4 million dollars... Or what I like to call, "the amount we deposited in Jonathan Cooper's bank account last year to never play a down for us"

Ask Chicago about reliable kickers when you're trying to get to and win in the playoffs

I would hope that a kicker isn't going to make or break our offense. You're right about the 49ers not really having anyone else worth tagging. I guess that means our roster has a long way to go. If Gould isn't a 49er I personally won't lose any sleep over it. BTW, why haven't we extended him yet if he's so dope? Because he wants to go back to the team that got rid of him? 

[Forge]

5 hours ago, PapaShogun said:

I would hope that a kicker isn't going to make or break our offense. You're right about the 49ers not really having anyone else worth tagging. I guess that means our roster has a long way to go. If Gould isn't a 49er I personally won't lose any sleep over it. BTW, why haven't we extended him yet if he's so dope? Because he wants to go back to the team that got rid of him? 

Why haven't any of the teams with guys they are going to tag extended them yet? We've talked extension, hasn't gotten done. Could be for a number of reasons...

Nearly every offense is in a situation where the kicker is going to matter throughout the season...

[757-NINER]

Yeah it could be for any number of reasons why a extension hasn't gotten done. Gould is good but he's older so maybe he wants more years than maybe we're comfortable with. I really wish we would invest a younger guy to have around for a extended period of time. Seems like we've been going the grizzled veteran route since Joe Nedney. But Gould is still super effective so I'd like to see something get done but it seems like the tag is inevitable. 

[rudyZ]

2 hours ago, 757-NINER said:

Yeah it could be for any number of reasons why a extension hasn't gotten done. Gould is good but he's older so maybe he wants more years than maybe we're comfortable with. I really wish we would invest a younger guy to have around for a extended period of time. Seems like we've been going the grizzled veteran route since Joe Nedney. But Gould is still super effective so I'd like to see something get done but it seems like the tag is inevitable. 

I feel like we've had good luck with kickers for a while. Nedney was great. Akers had two good years. Dawson was dawesome. Gould is gold. Candlestick had a reputation for being hard to kick, but outside of the bad grass and footing, is Levi's that hard to kick in? We could perhaps bring someone in who will continue our recent tradition of good kickers. The thing with Gould, it's if his heart is in going back to Chicago, where he settled his family, where his children go to school, etc, I'd hate to franchise him and just keep him against his will. Of course, he won't say a word, we're probably the second team on his list, he doesn't hate being here. He'd just prefer Chicago (I'm assuming things here, but I don't think I'm far off). So all of this comes down to talking to him and doing right by him. The franchise tag is good money for a year. If Lynch can talk him into staying one more year, sign the tag tender, then he could go back to Chicago next year, if they'll have him then. But if he'd much rather go, then let him go. Maybe we could tag and trade him! Get a late rounder from Chicago, they get their kicker, Gould goes home, and we get a pick, everybody wins. We only have 6 picks, I wouldn't mind adding another one.

[N4L]

32 minutes ago, rudyZ said:

I feel like we've had good luck with kickers for a while. Nedney was great. Akers had two good years. Dawson was dawesome. Gould is gold. Candlestick had a reputation for being hard to kick, but outside of the bad grass and footing, is Levi's that hard to kick in? We could perhaps bring someone in who will continue our recent tradition of good kickers. The thing with Gould, it's if his heart is in going back to Chicago, where he settled his family, where his children go to school, etc, I'd hate to franchise him and just keep him against his will. Of course, he won't say a word, we're probably the second team on his list, he doesn't hate being here. He'd just prefer Chicago (I'm assuming things here, but I don't think I'm far off). So all of this comes down to talking to him and doing right by him. The franchise tag is good money for a year. If Lynch can talk him into staying one more year, sign the tag tender, then he could go back to Chicago next year, if they'll have him then. But if he'd much rather go, then let him go. Maybe we could tag and trade him! Get a late rounder from Chicago, they get their kicker, Gould goes home, and we get a pick, everybody wins. We only have 6 picks, I wouldn't mind adding another one.

Yeah I was going to say, we've had veteran kickers for a while now and it seems like we have gotten good production from all of them. I see no upside in going another direction at this point.

The only problem with the tag and trade for Chicago is that they don't have a lot of cap space. They have 4 million in dead cap for parkey and 12 million in cap space after they pay rookies, although apparently they can cut several guys to generate another 15 million. I don't know if they will want to pay kickers 9 million atc and I don't know if gould would want to take less than the tag amount 

If they work out a LTD prior to the trade I guess it could make sense, but I don't want them talking at all right now. 

Id rather just keep gould at this point. We've struggled scoring touchdowns and I don't want to compound that by also having a shakey kicker 

[rudyZ]

18 hours ago, N4L said:

Yeah I was going to say, we've had veteran kickers for a while now and it seems like we have gotten good production from all of them. I see no upside in going another direction at this point.

The only problem with the tag and trade for Chicago is that they don't have a lot of cap space. They have 4 million in dead cap for parkey and 12 million in cap space after they pay rookies, although apparently they can cut several guys to generate another 15 million. I don't know if they will want to pay kickers 9 million atc and I don't know if gould would want to take less than the tag amount 

If they work out a LTD prior to the trade I guess it could make sense, but I don't want them talking at all right now. 

Id rather just keep gould at this point. We've struggled scoring touchdowns and I don't want to compound that by also having a shakey kicker 

If we tag him and trade him to Chicago, can't they still re-sign him to a long term contract with a lower cap hit? Also, can we tag him and trade him before he signs the tender, or do we need a signed tender in order to be able to trade him? Once he signs the tender, can he sign a long term deal or he has to wait a year?

Maybe having a bad kicker could do us good. We'd try to go for it and Kyle would have to be more aggressive calling plays. Get it in the endzone, don't settle down and kick!

[Chrissooner49er]

I'd keep Gould...or draft Austin Seibert out of Oklahoma. Kid was very consistent for the Sooners over several years.

[JIllg]

On 2/23/2019 at 7:43 AM, Forge said:

Blair Walsh is a free agent too

 

6 minutes ago, Chrissooner49er said:

I'd keep Gould...or draft Austin Seibert out of Oklahoma. Kid was very consistent for the Sooners over several years.

So, I'm an Auburn alumnus. Our kickers have a terrific history at the college level (and hey, we need to have one position at which we can claim supremacy over the intra-state rival). Daniel Carlson was the finest collegiate kicker I ever saw. They trotted that dude out for 55+ yd field goals darn near every week and he was terrific (hey, when your offense was frequently marshalled by the addicted, unathletic marvel Sean White, you stall out a bunch of drives). He is the SEC's all time leading scorer by a fair distance. I thought he was the surest Auburn player to come out in a long, long time to have a successful NFL career. 

Carlson lasted 4 kicks into his first job. Kicking is a high variance endeavor. Adam Vinatieri missed two important short kicks in these playoffs. Robbie Gould is one of the best kickers in the history of the NFL. He's also been riding the good side of the dice with us. Past production does not guarantee future production, especially when you are only really having him around to ensure that 2-4 desperately crucial kicks are made per year. The sample size is just too small. And missing even one of these crucial kicks can lead to a spiral in confidence. Long story short, I'd like to have him taking those kicks, too. But don't see them as a binary thing - you have Gould you make, you have someone like Parkey you don't. Parkey made 91.3% of his kicks with the Dolphins the year before, including 6 of 7 from the range of the field goal he missed in the playoffs. Parkey's career field goal percentage is 83.9%. Gould's is 87.7% (though an absolutely brilliant 96% with us). You could see that as Gould having made some structural improvement that makes him a better kicker since he's been here. Personally, I think that he will regress to the mean. And it is a bit of a fallacy to look at Gould's (truly wonderful) game winning kicks in the Jimmy Gesus ride of awesomeness as representative of him being able to do that forevermore.  

[Forge]

13 minutes ago, JIllg said:

 

So, I'm an Auburn alumnus. Our kickers have a terrific history at the college level (and hey, we need to have one position at which we can claim supremacy over the intra-state rival). Daniel Carlson was the finest collegiate kicker I ever saw. They trotted that dude out for 55+ yd field goals darn near every week and he was terrific (hey, when your offense was frequently marshalled by the addicted, unathletic marvel Sean White, you stall out a bunch of drives). He is the SEC's all time leading scorer by a fair distance. I thought he was the surest Auburn player to come out in a long, long time to have a successful NFL career. 

Carlson lasted 4 kicks into his first job. Kicking is a high variance endeavor. Adam Vinatieri missed two important short kicks in these playoffs. Robbie Gould is one of the best kickers in the history of the NFL. He's also been riding the good side of the dice with us. Past production does not guarantee future production, especially when you are only really having him around to ensure that 2-4 desperately crucial kicks are made per year. The sample size is just too small. And missing even one of these crucial kicks can lead to a spiral in confidence. Long story short, I'd like to have him taking those kicks, too. But don't see them as a binary thing - you have Gould you make, you have someone like Parkey you don't. Parkey made 91.3% of his kicks with the Dolphins the year before, including 6 of 7 from the range of the field goal he missed in the playoffs. Parkey's career field goal percentage is 83.9%. Gould's is 87.7% (though an absolutely brilliant 96% with us). You could see that as Gould having made some structural improvement that makes him a better kicker since he's been here. Personally, I think that he will regress to the mean. And it is a bit of a fallacy to look at Gould's (truly wonderful) game winning kicks in the Jimmy Gesus ride of awesomeness as representative of him being able to do that forevermore.  

 Ladainian Tomlinson is overrated because he might get injured

(That joke makes more sense if you've been around a while lol)

[JIllg]

5 minutes ago, Forge said:

So, Ladainian Tomlinson is overrated because he might get injured

The difference is the degree to which you have control over your own production relative to your peers and the number of opportunities such that a couple aberrent samples aren't capable of ruining your year. LT got hundreds of opportunities to affect a game, kickers get ~5-10. There are going to be a high number of short field goals and XP that replacement level players will make at an extremely high level. So, what you are really having them for is long field goals in games decided by small numbers of points. Fine. If kickers were a consistent breed - if you could count on Gould going 96% and very likely nailing all of them, he'd be very valuable. But he's probably inherently a ~89%ish kicker that is just as likely to repeat that 96% performance as he is to drop back to posting a year equivalent to Parkey's career line.