LinderFournette Posted November 14, 2018 Author Share Posted November 14, 2018 1 hour ago, Tugboat said: I mean, this is the thing that kinda grinds on me about "fixing this team" for 2019. That we're even talking about cutting players like Gipson, or Calais/Malik who are still outstanding defensive players. Like...is Calais even "hitting a wall"? He's still been a pretty darn good player, productive players who generates a lot of disruption and we have literally nothing to replace him (despite ostensibly spending a 1st round pick on that guy). He's basically fallen back from his career high sort of numbers in 2017 to...something more like his career normal, which is still extremely good? And we're talking about potentially cutting guys like that and gutting key players on our defense (and some of our best players overall) because they've dumped a whole bunch of awful money into bad players on the offense. That's disgusting imo. It's dysfunctional. I'd rather see them do whatever they can financially to keep this defense largely intact next year. At least the key/core guys (including Calais, Malik, Gipson). Just rip away any of the bad money they can from the offense and try to rebuild it by going absurdly Offense-heavy in the draft. It's just hard to see this team getting significantly better next year by cannibalizing important parts of the defense. That unit is going to have to be beastly again, if they want any chance at making noise. honestly the only 2 guys i see needing to be cut for Cap reasons is Dareus(im sorry but we cant afford an 11mill NT) and Church. i havent seen enough to say im confident in Bryan being able to handle being a replacement for Jackson cuz ive seen enough of him as a DE to say that aint working. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tugboat Posted November 14, 2018 Share Posted November 14, 2018 59 minutes ago, LinderFournette said: i liked the idea of Harrison because i felt like he was BPA and would help create some cap room next offseason with the release of church. hopefully we start playing more of our younger talent to see what we do and do not need in terms of young talent. I think the Harrison thing was fine. There's a pretty strong argument to be made that he was so far and away "BPA" at that point, with a late 3rd round pick i didn't mind them getting some "insurance" or an actual succession plan for the future in place with Harrison. It was just harder to swallow in the context of what they did with the other picks before that. It's that it was like a 3rd pick in a row that solidified a theme...They mostly went into a big season with high expectations, having spent their 1st three picks on "developmental" guys that weren't going to be real starters until at least 2019. It sure has been nice having a 3rd starter capable safety, but it also hasn't really changed our season's fortunes even a little bit, hasn't really dislodged Church...and has mostly just sorta created a slight wrinkle to how they line up against certain teams/situations. And i'd argue Harrison lasting so long on the board is more a reflection of the way teams seem to be able to just pluck "serviceable" safeties (especially more limited SS types) out of pretty much anywhere. There are guys who can play sitting there as mid-season FA pickups. There were a couple other really good safety prospects who also "fell" hard in that draft too. It's more "the straw that broke the camel's back" sort of thing though, when it comes to Harrison, rather than that pick specifically. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tugboat Posted November 14, 2018 Share Posted November 14, 2018 55 minutes ago, LinderFournette said: honestly the only 2 guys i see needing to be cut for Cap reasons is Dareus(im sorry but we cant afford an 11mill NT) and Church. i havent seen enough to say im confident in Bryan being able to handle being a replacement for Jackson cuz ive seen enough of him as a DE to say that aint working. Church is probably the one i'd say is all but gone. If we're talking about anyone on that defense actually hitting a wall...it has been him. His lack of speed is really starting to catch up with him at times. Though i'd argue again, that's probably exacerbated by our trash offense taxing the defense beyond what they can do. Especially for an aging Vet like Church who just doesn't have the live young legs to play three quarters of every game without showing some fatigue (physical, which leads to mental). Given there's no dead money, and he's literally one of the only players on the entire roster that we have a viable replacement for...yeah, i think he'll be gone. But that's one of those situations where they have to NOT do what they did with a lot of positions this year (cough WR glaring example); promoting the guy, and then failing to resupply that depth behind them. You lose Church ---> promote Harrison, great. But you've gotta then find a guy who can step in behind Harrison and be capable of stepping in if needed as that "3rd safety" to replenish the depth. It's not just easy savings for free. Dareus i can see the reasoning. We can't afford to spend that $10.5M on him as a NT anymore. Especially not while also paying Abry another $4M on the cap. But Abry is also a guy you can walk away from with zero dead...so if you can find a way to finnagle some restructuring to get Dareus cap number down in exchange for some guarantees or something, and also shed Abry's $4M in favour of cheaper/drafted backup DT...that's probably something worth exploring too. I think Dareus is still the better player, and the harder skillset to replace. But at the end of the day, a massive part of our cap crunch and inability to go out and really spend on the offense (and have to start penny pinching on the defense with guys like Dareus) essentially boils down to...Bortles money. You just can't have a $21M Quarterback who sucks. With like $16.5M of dead money especially. There's no way you can trot him back out next year as the field general of our offense without immediately throwing in the towel on 2019 season. And you really can't afford to have $21M parked on the bench every week. I'd rather have an $11M starting NT even if they come off the field 35% of the snaps, because at least you're getting something out of it. I think it's at the point where we pretty much have to cut Bortles loose and eat that dead money. Maybe some suckers give him a big enough deal to satisfy some of that alleged $6.5M of potential offsets. Someone's bound to at least throw a few million at him so maybe our dead money is down to a nice even dozen million bucks. I'd rather than that, than twice that wasted on a backup QB (and a distraction). But even $10-14M is an absolutely premium impact FA (especially with Florida taxes) at another position of need we can't afford. Or a couple good solid starters. Or the ability to keep more of those good players we have together already, and maintain some more depth. Or worst of all...probably half the money we'd need to sign an actually competent starter if one happens to become available somehow. Bad QB money hurts more than pretty much anything else because there's no such thing as a "rotational QB". There's no salvaging a part-time player out of it. You either have to play a bad QB and be a bad team, or you have this ugly dead money albatross on your balance sheet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaguarCrazy2832 Posted November 14, 2018 Share Posted November 14, 2018 9 hours ago, Tugboat said: Was everyone really that excited about the pick? I think a lot of people were kinda intrigued by the upside of Taven and didn't mind the confidence to double-down on a strength, if the rest of the team was going to be competent enough. But i know i wasn't a particularly big fan of spending 2/3 of our premium picks on "backups" for the future of our already strong unit...rather than actually addressing our extremely weak unit on offense. Especially in a draft that looked tailor-made to address an offensive unit with what looked like an abundance of potentially quality OLine and even "late 1st" type WRs (not to mention the stacked 1st round worth of QBs). I completely agree. If not for the injuries on offense we probably wouldn't be having this discussion but yea. Getting 2 guys that appeared to be strong value but weren't going to make major impact yet might not have been the best thing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DuvalsKing Posted November 14, 2018 Share Posted November 14, 2018 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tugboat Posted November 14, 2018 Share Posted November 14, 2018 34 minutes ago, DuvalsKing said: I feel like the worst thing on that play is probably Myles Jack. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LinderFournette Posted November 15, 2018 Author Share Posted November 15, 2018 21 hours ago, Tugboat said: Church is probably the one i'd say is all but gone. If we're talking about anyone on that defense actually hitting a wall...it has been him. His lack of speed is really starting to catch up with him at times. Though i'd argue again, that's probably exacerbated by our trash offense taxing the defense beyond what they can do. Especially for an aging Vet like Church who just doesn't have the live young legs to play three quarters of every game without showing some fatigue (physical, which leads to mental). Given there's no dead money, and he's literally one of the only players on the entire roster that we have a viable replacement for...yeah, i think he'll be gone. But that's one of those situations where they have to NOT do what they did with a lot of positions this year (cough WR glaring example); promoting the guy, and then failing to resupply that depth behind them. You lose Church ---> promote Harrison, great. But you've gotta then find a guy who can step in behind Harrison and be capable of stepping in if needed as that "3rd safety" to replenish the depth. It's not just easy savings for free. Dareus i can see the reasoning. We can't afford to spend that $10.5M on him as a NT anymore. Especially not while also paying Abry another $4M on the cap. But Abry is also a guy you can walk away from with zero dead...so if you can find a way to finnagle some restructuring to get Dareus cap number down in exchange for some guarantees or something, and also shed Abry's $4M in favour of cheaper/drafted backup DT...that's probably something worth exploring too. I think Dareus is still the better player, and the harder skillset to replace. But at the end of the day, a massive part of our cap crunch and inability to go out and really spend on the offense (and have to start penny pinching on the defense with guys like Dareus) essentially boils down to...Bortles money. You just can't have a $21M Quarterback who sucks. With like $16.5M of dead money especially. There's no way you can trot him back out next year as the field general of our offense without immediately throwing in the towel on 2019 season. And you really can't afford to have $21M parked on the bench every week. I'd rather have an $11M starting NT even if they come off the field 35% of the snaps, because at least you're getting something out of it. I think it's at the point where we pretty much have to cut Bortles loose and eat that dead money. Maybe some suckers give him a big enough deal to satisfy some of that alleged $6.5M of potential offsets. Someone's bound to at least throw a few million at him so maybe our dead money is down to a nice even dozen million bucks. I'd rather than that, than twice that wasted on a backup QB (and a distraction). But even $10-14M is an absolutely premium impact FA (especially with Florida taxes) at another position of need we can't afford. Or a couple good solid starters. Or the ability to keep more of those good players we have together already, and maintain some more depth. Or worst of all...probably half the money we'd need to sign an actually competent starter if one happens to become available somehow. Bad QB money hurts more than pretty much anything else because there's no such thing as a "rotational QB". There's no salvaging a part-time player out of it. You either have to play a bad QB and be a bad team, or you have this ugly dead money albatross on your balance sheet. we also can walk away for dareus 0 dead money just for your thoughts. if we get him to take a restructure down to say maybe 7.5 then sure keep him but then we are going to cut abry as well and then that leaves us needing another NT cuz im skeptical of anoku. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tugboat Posted November 15, 2018 Share Posted November 15, 2018 2 hours ago, LinderFournette said: we also can walk away for dareus 0 dead money just for your thoughts. if we get him to take a restructure down to say maybe 7.5 then sure keep him but then we are going to cut abry as well and then that leaves us needing another NT cuz im skeptical of anoku. Yeah. It'd be one or the other. Don't want to scrap both guys there. Just thinking that if you can get that number down a bit on Dareus, maybe he's worth keeping over Abry. But our cap situation might be tight enough that they have to save the pennies there anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LinderFournette Posted November 15, 2018 Author Share Posted November 15, 2018 7 hours ago, Tugboat said: Yeah. It'd be one or the other. Don't want to scrap both guys there. Just thinking that if you can get that number down a bit on Dareus, maybe he's worth keeping over Abry. But our cap situation might be tight enough that they have to save the pennies there anyway. im not sure where i would value Dexter lawrence but hes probably the best true NT type in the draft and hes got a bit more length then most at 6 foot 3. i know hes easily a top 32 player for sure. i wonder if we could get the raiders to say trade us 2 first to move up into our 1st. ue 1 on lawrence 1 on fant or another offensive guy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Speedyg Posted November 25, 2018 Share Posted November 25, 2018 Church is the only one we can viable cut with a young player behind him. He's gone. Malik/Dareus/Calais/Jones. I had been operating under the assumption that Dareus or Jones will be gone. But Those two started last game and Abry has been playing well. At $4M with no bonus attached, I think we keep him. Not sure you can get the bang for buck trying to find someone in this rising salary of the NFL to give what he does. Keep in mind that McCray just cost us $3.5M so $4M for a starting DT with versatility sounds appealing to me now. Calais has been our best player this year in the DL albeit he's not getting as many snaps. He's the guy I think I talk to about restructuring: he's a character vet guy who wants to win and seems genuinely on board with Blake at QB. I think you have a better chance of getting him to negotiate than Malik or Dareus (who I don't think we renegotiate with given he has zero bonus money left). Which leaves...Malik. As I said I don't think he renegotiates. And with Dareus and Abry seemingly needed to solidify our run defense, and Bryan behind him, he might be the odd man to go. The broadcast mentioned him going light this season to generate pass rush. so it's possible they ask him back at a heavier weight to be more sturdy vs the run. But too lazy to look it up, I believe letting him go saves us $7Mish and Church saves us $4M. We're over $12 M and estimated $8M rollover so these moves puts us under $7M plus whatever we save from renegotiating with Calais so let's say $10M under. Doubt we can find any QB worth giving that money to, so we ride (and die) with Blake another year. But we NEED another option other than Blake if anything else just to evaluate as a possible backup for 2020 as we for sure will have a young guy at the helm then. Draft needs to address BAP again, as getting young players to replace our more expensive/aging vets (Calais, Gipson, Parnell) is needed, but we also need to shore up that OLine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaguarCrazy2832 Posted November 25, 2018 Share Posted November 25, 2018 I have been busy most Sundays the last month or so. How has Erick Flowers looked? Has Taken Bryan improved at all? Is there any unforeseen hope? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Speedyg Posted November 25, 2018 Share Posted November 25, 2018 2 hours ago, JaguarCrazy2832 said: I have been busy most Sundays the last month or so. How has Erick Flowers looked? Has Taken Bryan improved at all? Is there any unforeseen hope? Flowers didn't look like a complete failure but that might be due to the rest of the OL failing before he has a chance to fail. Bryan looked better in the sense he actually made a play and that he didn't look completely lost. Still far from someone making an impact though and still doesn't disengage from OLs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LinderFournette Posted November 26, 2018 Author Share Posted November 26, 2018 i want Kliff Kingsbury as OC. make that happen yesterday Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaguarCrazy2832 Posted November 28, 2018 Share Posted November 28, 2018 On 11/25/2018 at 10:54 PM, LinderFournette said: i want Kliff Kingsbury as OC. make that happen yesterday That would be pretty great Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Speedyg Posted November 28, 2018 Share Posted November 28, 2018 On 11/25/2018 at 9:05 AM, JaguarCrazy2832 said: I have been busy most Sundays the last month or so. How has Erick Flowers looked? Has Taken Bryan improved at all? Is there any unforeseen hope? And then he turns in a terrible game lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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