2018 NFL Free Agents Thread

[Ronnie's Pinky]

49 minutes ago, Forge said:

https://overthecap.com/2018-free-agency-review-49ers

Free agency review of what we have done so far (not including Toomer). Sadly, agree with most of it - some meh grades along with a couple of bad ones and then a really good grade on Sherman (which is to be expected)

He doesn't seem to account well for the structure of the deals, and the fact that the team can get out from under McKinnon with little dead money if he doesn't pan out. There is a maximum amount of cap room that teams can roll over in any given four year period, and I believe the 49ers were close to going over it if they hadn't spent some real money. This comment of his:

"I honestly expected them to be competing for some of the big name talent at corner, guard, and receiver while maybe trying to land a decent pass rusher and they were never in on those players."

...seems pretty bizarre, and betrays a misunderstanding of the team's actual situation and priorities. First, the 49ers did sign a big-name talent at corner, and to a team-friendly deal, at that. Dunno what more he wants there. The "big name talent" at guard mostly consisted of players who were poor fits for Shanahan's scheme, and the contracts handed out were not cheap. I'm sure if the 49ers had actually signed one of these guys, he would have complained about the price they paid in doing so. As I'm sure you know, team needs at receiver were always overblown, and the top receivers got some pretty big contracts. I wanted the front office to go after Allen Robinson or Sammy Watkins, too, but at the numbers they got, I'm fine that they didn't. Finally, which "decent pass rushers" were actually on the market? As far as I can tell, Attauchu was actually one of the better guys out there. How can you blame a team for not signing players who were never available?

[Forge]

11 minutes ago, J-ALL-DAY said:

They gave McKinnon's signing an F. Damn lol.

I don't agree with Garoppolo write up. In fact it makes little sense. At first it says give 49ers credit for not killing their cap, and then it says they could have done much better. How so? 

Agreed on Sherman, if he is healthy, then it is a VERY good signing. 

Don't really care for the grades on the other lower signings. It felt like we overpaid guys like Gillam but nothing too major. 

 

Yeah, the B- grade is odd because it feels like they are dinging us for not signing him sooner when he would have been cheaper? At least that's what it reads off to me. Maybe I'm misunderstanding that. But it does kind of take two to tango, and there were was always an ongoing dialogue between the two sides. It's not like contracts always get hammered out in a week or two, and if you started discussing it while he was playing, of course Jimmy's side would want to wait - his value continued to climb with each passing game. 

Sherman is definitely an A signing. 

AGree with you on the lower signings, and I think that they did a good job of trying to state that, even though some of the grades are harsh. They say it in the Coyle re-sign that deals like this have minimal impact and likely won't hurt you, but at the same time, that doesn't make them good trades. I think that's a fair distinction. I've felt that we have overpaid for most of the guys we have signed, which I don't quite understand, but for a lot of them, it's whatever because they are such minor signings. 

[Forge]

2 minutes ago, Ronnie's Pinky said:

He doesn't seem to account well for the structure of the deals, and the fact that the team can get out from under McKinnon with little dead money if he doesn't pan out. There is a maximum amount of cap room that teams can roll over in any given four year period, and I believe the 49ers were close to going over it if they hadn't spent some real money.

Structure is somewhat secondary - even if you cut him after the first year, as I said earlier, you still paid the dude 12 million for a single season, which is stupid amount to pay for a guy like McKinnon that hasn't done anything remotely worthwhile to support that. I totally understand the McKinnon grade - from a value standpoint, there is none in my opinion. He could be very good, but he's going to have to be super good in order to make that one year 12 million worth it. Now, with each passing year he's here, that gets better, so there's something there that should be accounted for. But I get the grade on face value. 

[J-ALL-DAY]

Garoppolo wasn't going to sign until after the season. His team knew he didn't have as much negotiation pull if he just went off the 1.5 games he played in NE. After he shined the last five weeks of the season, he knew he was going to get whatever the hell he wanted.

The way his structure reads, seems like the team either is planning on spending big next offseason or will be handing out some big extensions pretty soon. 

[J-ALL-DAY]

McKinnon may be a great fit for this offense and may shine, but I always thought we could have addressed the RB position in the draft. This draft has so many good backs that we could have found one late in the second round or in the third that could have produced big. But Shanny is insisting on having as many receiving options as possible so I guess we gotta live with him wanting to overpay guys like McKinnon and Juice Check. 

[Forge]

6 minutes ago, Ronnie's Pinky said:

"I honestly expected them to be competing for some of the big name talent at corner, guard, and receiver while maybe trying to land a decent pass rusher and they were never in on those players."

...seems pretty bizarre, and betrays a misunderstanding of the team's actual situation and priorities. First, the 49ers did sign a big-name talent at corner, and to a team-friendly deal, at that. Dunno what more he wants there. The "big name talent" at guard mostly consisted of players who were poor fits for Shanahan's scheme, and the contracts handed out were not cheap. I'm sure if the 49ers had actually signed one of these guys, he would have complained about the price they paid in doing so. As I'm sure you know, team needs at receiver were always overblown, and the top receivers got some pretty big contracts. I wanted the front office to go after Allen Robinson or Sammy Watkins, too, but at the numbers they got, I'm fine that they didn't. Finally, which "decent pass rushers" were actually on the market? As far as I can tell, Attauchu was actually one of the better guys out there. How can you blame a team for not signing players who were never available?

I think that the writer doesn't know something that I myself didn't know - that Kyle puts more emphasis on the center position than guard. That's why the Richburg deal makes more sense. I wanted Norwell a lot (he would have been fine), but I didn't know that Kyle prefers the center to the guard until J said it later on. But I don't think the lack of activity he mentions there has anything itself to do with the grades that he gave out on the contracts we did sign. More or less just stating that he was expecting us to zig and we somewhat zagged instead. The pass rusher thing I have no idea, because I agree...there just wasn't much of a market there. 

[John232]

42 minutes ago, Forge said:

Mckinnon was a massive overpay, that's why the grade is harsh. Even if you cut him after this year, you still gave him 12 million for 1 year, which is just a terrible overpay and poor use of funds for the most part. You're giving him nearly Bell like money for that year (and let's be real, if we are cutting him after a year, he didn't come close to earning it) and while he's a nice weapon, people question the actual quality of running back he is. He's certainly not a top half running back in terms of what he has done. In terms of value, I'd say it's definitely one of the worst contracts given out at face value. Doesn't mean he won't be productive or that we can't get some value from having him on the team or even that he can't exceed the contract (look at Justin Smith), but these grades are largely based on face value currently and it's just an awful contract with that regard. He hasn't done anything to deserve the kind of contract he got / we gave him. Again, love the fit, but it's a terrible value. 

I guess i'm looking at it very differently. Yes, the dollar sign is terrible value. But the long term commitment is not. That's my point. I don't care about 1 year contracts right now because even with a massive overpay like Mckinnon, the long term ramifications in the context of this team are nill. I'd argue based on long term commitment, Garcon is a worse contract but I doubt that warranted an F.  I don't think it's a good contract, but far from an F. Far from what his value is, but I'd shove in a bunch of money up front with an option of an early out than force a long term commitment. 

 

Now, if we were a cash strapped team, this would be awful. But when taking context into account, again, not an F. 

 

I also see you basically addressed this in another reply lo. 

[rudyZ]

1 hour ago, Forge said:

Structure is somewhat secondary - even if you cut him after the first year, as I said earlier, you still paid the dude 12 million for a single season, which is stupid amount to pay for a guy like McKinnon that hasn't done anything remotely worthwhile to support that. I totally understand the McKinnon grade - from a value standpoint, there is none in my opinion. He could be very good, but he's going to have to be super good in order to make that one year 12 million worth it. Now, with each passing year he's here, that gets better, so there's something there that should be accounted for. But I get the grade on face value. 

I honestly don't care about McKinnon getting paid 12m for one year. It's Jed's money. If paying him that much helps us pay Buckner in two years, then I feel that's clever cap management. All our deals had bigger upfront payments, and all our deals had outs built into them. It's all about avoiding bad cap ramifications. That was probably the only way to get a guy like McKinnon and not have to guarantee too much money over five years. It was the prudent approach Lynch has mentioned. Yes, we're spending money, but we're not locking ourselves up. Yes, we're spending A LOT of money, but we have the space, and it's Jed's money... so, who cares?

[Forge]

3 minutes ago, rudyZ said:

I honestly don't care about McKinnon getting paid 12m for one year. It's Jed's money. If paying him that much helps us pay Buckner in two years, then I feel that's clever cap management. All our deals had bigger upfront payments, and all our deals had outs built into them. It's all about avoiding bad cap ramifications. That was probably the only way to get a guy like McKinnon and not have to guarantee too much money over five years. It was the prudent approach Lynch has mentioned. Yes, we're spending money, but we're not locking ourselves up. Yes, we're spending A LOT of money, but we have the space, and it's Jed's money... so, who cares?

Or you could have just paid a guy 5 million this year and still had no affect on future year caps but had more additional roll over. People are putting too much emphasis on "we're not locked in long term", when it still does affect future years cap and still doesn't mean the contract itself is "good". 

[rudyZ]

12 minutes ago, Forge said:

Or you could have just paid a guy 5 million this year and still had no affect on future year caps but had more additional roll over. People are putting too much emphasis on "we're not locked in long term", when it still does affect future years cap and still doesn't mean the contract itself is "good". 

I just think his contract is irrelevant. It has no impact on our ability to sign other players this year. It will have no impact next year. It will have no impact in two years. I really don't care. Sure, you can oppose it on principles, but really, it's just irrelevant. If anything, I just think it's funny. And honestly, I'm happy for the guy. Invest that money, Jerrick! Still, at the end of the day, week, month or year, I still won't care about it. Now, if we signed Brock Osweiler to a five year deal with 40m guaranteed, and it blew up in our face and impacted us for a few years after he was released or traded, and prevented us from spending because we're too close to the cap, then yeah, I'd be angry, I'd see the relevance of calling it a bad contract. But as things stand, I really just don't care. There's really just no way it can come back and haunt us for years to come. It is an overpay, but an irrelevant one. Let's give 10m for one year to Kyle Nelson!! Okay, that's just silly. But do you really think the 7m difference between the contract you suggest and the one McKinnon got, the 7m that would have been rolled over, will really have an impact on our ability to sign players in the future? I don't. The contract isn't good, I agree. No one can argue it is good. But it could be much worse.

[big9erfan]

3 hours ago, Forge said:

Structure is somewhat secondary - even if you cut him after the first year, as I said earlier, you still paid the dude 12 million for a single season, which is stupid amount to pay for a guy like McKinnon that hasn't done anything remotely worthwhile to support that. I totally understand the McKinnon grade - from a value standpoint, there is none in my opinion. He could be very good, but he's going to have to be super good in order to make that one year 12 million worth it. Now, with each passing year he's here, that gets better, so there's something there that should be accounted for. But I get the grade on face value. 

I'm happy with how we manage our cap, in terms of how we put contracts together. But when Shanny has his eyes set on a particular kind of RB (Juszczyk and McKinnon) he is willing to far overpay for them.  Both contacts seem terrible to me, and both trouble me. I'll cut him some slack and see how it works out.

[big9erfan]

3 hours ago, J-ALL-DAY said:

Garoppolo wasn't going to sign until after the season. His team knew he didn't have as much negotiation pull if he just went off the 1.5 games he played in NE. After he shined the last five weeks of the season, he knew he was going to get whatever the hell he wanted.

The way his structure reads, seems like the team either is planning on spending big next offseason or will be handing out some big extensions pretty soon. 

Yeah. Managing the cap is a multi-year planning effort.  You don't go out and spend all the money you've got now and be OK ending up in cap-hell the next year. Of course, you shouldn't overpay for so-so RBs just because you have the money available to do that. 

[big9erfan]

Overall I think the article was pretty poor. He ended up saying all we did was sign a C, a CB and some backup.In the first place he gave us a bad grade for locking in a franchise QB to a long term contract at reasonably good terms. That signing should have been an A and alone should have made it a good offseason for us.  Aside from that I expected us to sign a couple of good vets and a couple of backup guys. That exactly what we did. In fact we did it quite well with a potential all pro if Sherman can get back to his old form, and one of thhe best young Centers in the game (and Shanny has already explained why that is important) to bolster a rather poor interior o-line. We got LB depth and o-line depth and a starting RB. That's not too shabby at all. McKinnon might be better than he's shown so far and we all may see that later as a great signing. If he's a dud we can get out without much future cost. I'm fine with his one-year cost.

[Forge]

1 hour ago, big9erfan said:

Overall I think the article was pretty poor. He ended up saying all we did was sign a C, a CB and some backup.In the first place he gave us a bad grade for locking in a franchise QB to a long term contract at reasonably good terms. That signing should have been an A and alone should have made it a good offseason for us.  Aside from that I expected us to sign a couple of good vets and a couple of backup guys. That exactly what we did. In fact we did it quite well with a potential all pro if Sherman can get back to his old form, and one of thhe best young Centers in the game (and Shanny has already explained why that is important) to bolster a rather poor interior o-line. We got LB depth and o-line depth and a starting RB. That's not too shabby at all. McKinnon might be better than he's shown so far and we all may see that later as a great signing. If he's a dud we can get out without much future cost. I'm fine with his one-year cost.

He gave us a B-, in what way is that poor? A little harsher than I would be, particularly given like J, I don't like some of the reasoning behind it (signing him earlier), but I certainly didn't take it to be a poor grade. Personally, I wouldn't have scored it an A just because of the risk - we gave the richest deal in history to a guy with a 7 game sample size. It's pretty much unprecedented with Rodgers' first contract extension probably the closest. But a B+ to me overall. I'll defend that deal every day. We basically gave Jimmy G 10 million more the first two years so that we could have a 3 year option at reasonable costs. I think that's fair for both sides. 

He also gave us an A for sherman, and B- on richburg, so those were fine grades and I don't disagree with them (I probably would have given Richburg a firm B). The final grade at a C I'm torn on. I mean, yes, I hate the McKinnon deal. Yes, I greatly dislike the Cooper deal. I thought the Senor Sneezy deal was solid (would rather him at 3 than lynch at 4, even with slightly more guaranteed) so I would have rated that slightly higher, and I thought Gilliam was a slight overpay but nothing that really rankled me. C seems about right. Coyle and Marsh were additional slight overpays for what they have done, but again, nothing that overly rankled me, but they certainly shouldn't be weighted with the same degree as some of the bigger ones. So most of the bad deals in my opinion were the smaller deals we made. But if I'm looking at the big deals of Richburg which was nearly exactly what I projected (I guessed 9/45, we gave him 9/47), Jimmy G, Sherman are the biggest parts of the off season...I feel like though should be weighted higher. So I probably would have stuck around a B or B-. Semantics maybe, but his grading weight just seems peculiar. Also, I know he wasn't a FA, but Goodwin's extension should be considered, and given what other receivers got on the market, his deal is a complete steal and should be an A

[Forge]

58 minutes ago, big9erfan said:

I'm happy with how we manage our cap, in terms of how we put contracts together. But when Shanny has his eyes set on a particular kind of RB (Juszczyk and McKinnon) he is willing to far overpay for them.  Both contacts seem terrible to me, and both trouble me. I'll cut him some slack and see how it works out.

This is kind of my major issue as well. Our propensity for overpaying marginal players. It's kind of perplexing. None of the deals are going to handcuff us - as RudyZ said, the deal is largely irrelevant in the long run (though I'm not so cavalier about the lost 7 million as he is as I do think that can impact you at some point) - but I will admit that these deals bother me to some extent. Maybe it's the price of paying for one year deals when some of these guys have multiyear offers on the table, but we have really paid a premium for guys we want when I dont' think that there was any real need to in most cases. Its still too early for me to established a real thought on it because it's so early in the tenure and we haven't seen the ebbs and flows...but it's a bit troubling.