2018 Free Agency targets

[GBHalas]

My thought on Burton is beside getting the money what would be his incentive to come here?  Most reserves who leave their team in free agency leaves "to become the man" or at least have a bigger role.  We just drafted what we hope is our number one TE, so either we don't believe in him or we stunt his development.  Giving Burton 60 targets doesn't justify giving him 7 mil a year and I'm sure he wants more touches than that to justify his life changing contract.

[WindyCity]

3 hours ago, AZBearsFan said:

Windy, you do understand that you’ve been killing Pace & Co. for giving “big” contracts to averageish players in Wheaton, Cooper, Sims & Glennon for months yet you’re advocating doing exactly the same thing with the likes of Albert Wilson and Trey Burton, right? How is the hypothetical Burton contract any different than the Sims deal last year other than that Sims was more of a blocker? It’s still top 15 starter money for a reserve player who even before Philly added a bunch of WR in 2017 (so when he had more opportunity) was just a role player producing at a replacement level. 

Most teams that are good teams but who also are able to pay huge money for top FA can do so because they have guys playing key roles at well below market rates. Having Shaheen as a lock starter the next 3 years at a non-1st round rate lets us spend that starter level money on an actual starter elsewhere where it will have more value to the team. We are in a REALLY good position to do that right now over the next few years with Mitch, Howard, Floyd, Shaheen and Cohen, and to a lesser extent Eddie Jackson. Specific to Shaheen/Burton, $7M not spent on Burton gets you a solid veteran starter at a lot of need positions. ILB. CB. Maybe WR. C/G. Spending it on a TE to play part time seems like a gross misallocation of resources.

Also, the only reason Meredith was making less than Wheaton was because he was already under contract at that rate. It’s very clear which would have had more UFA value last offseason. 

The only reason Shaheen would be making less than Burton is because he is under contract at that rate.

 

I have no issue with signing mid tier free agents. I have an issue when you miss on all of them in a single year.

 

We are signing tier 2 free agents. That is a majority of the market. You can only work with what is available. 

[WindyCity]

2 hours ago, GBHalas said:

My thought on Burton is beside getting the money what would be his incentive to come here?  Most reserves who leave their team in free agency leaves "to become the man" or at least have a bigger role.  We just drafted what we hope is our number one TE, so either we don't believe in him or we stunt his development.  Giving Burton 60 targets doesn't justify giving him 7 mil a year and I'm sure he wants more touches than that to justify his life changing contract.

Money and money

Burton at his size is probably not going to be a #1 TE for many teams.

[WindyCity]

7 million/season is not too much if you are going to use him in the offense.

If you are going to target a guy 60 times 7 million is more than reasonable. 

I agree if they just want to target Shaheen then don’t spend the money. But this is an offense that heavily targets the TE, more than Shaheen should be trusted with.

[WindyCity]

They paid Sims 6/season to be the blocking and #2 TE.

[AZBearsFan]

1 hour ago, WindyCity said:

They paid Sims 6/season to be the blocking and #2 TE.

Exactly. And they got KILLED for it. Including by you. He was never worth that contract. If Burton is worth top 15 money then he’s certainly good enough to get a starting spot somewhere. 

How many targets should Shaheen be “trusted with”? What makes one worthy of being trusted with targets? If he’s good he’ll get them and if not they’ll go elsewhere. 

[WindyCity]

7 minutes ago, AZBearsFan said:

Exactly. And they got KILLED for it. Including by you. He was never worth that contract. If Burton is worth top 15 money then he’s certainly good enough to get a starting spot somewhere. 

How many targets should Shaheen be “trusted with”? What makes one worthy of being trusted with targets? If he’s good he’ll get them and if not they’ll go elsewhere. 

The problem is we don’t have a defined elsewhere. We need some options, at this monent we have 500 targets and no where for them to go.

My guess is Shaheen is not ready to handle the 7th most targets for the position in his 2nd season. If he is great, but he probably needs someone to help him out with the load.

The Sims Contract is not an issue it is that he sucks. If he could do an even reasonable job his contract would be fine. 

[WindyCity]

I have no issue with the amounts of money we paid any free agents last season.

I have issues that they suck.

6 million/season for a #2 CB is perfectly reasonable, if he doesn’t suck.

5 million/season is perfectly reasonable for a #3 WR who you target 50-60 times, if he doesn’t catch 3 passes.

 

The contacts are right around market value, the evaluations were terrible.

[WindyCity]

12 minutes ago, AZBearsFan said:

Exactly. And they got KILLED for it. Including by you. He was never worth that contract. If Burton is worth top 15 money then he’s certainly good enough to get a starting spot somewhere. 

How many targets should Shaheen be “trusted with”? What makes one worthy of being trusted with targets? If he’s good he’ll get them and if not they’ll go elsewhere. 

I would love a rough idea of how you wouldn’t divide up roughly 500 targets?

We need to add options. Maybe it isn’t Bruton, Maybe they trust Daniel Brown more, but we are going to need a 2nd TE who can catch the ball, whoever it is.

[AZBearsFan]

1 minute ago, WindyCity said:

I have no issue with the amounts of money we paid any free agents last season.

I have issues that they suck.

6 million/season for a #2 CB is perfectly reasonable, if he doesn’t suck.

5 million/season is perfectly reasonable for a #3 WR who you target 50-60 times, if he doesn’t catch 3 passes.

 

The contacts are right around market value, the evaluations were terrible.

Not that I’m disagreeing with what we got out of them last year (how could I?) but we have to consider with regard specifically to Wheaton and Sims that Loggains just didn’t know what he was doing. I mean, we all know he didn’t know what he was doing, but he was consistently unable to put guys in position to be successful with all of our guys, not just the FA signings. Jesus, he had Cohen on the bench in the no-huddle and he was his best playmaker, and used Shaheen as a blocker on 70% of his reps when his strengths are in the passing game. I don’t think the use of Sims or Wheaton was any exception. Both were well under their statistical norms under Loggains.

2014-2016 Sims (23/222/2 on 30 targets in average) is about what I’d expect from a #2 TE and is basically what KC got out of their #2 TE Demetrius Harris last year (18/224/1 on 35 targets). It’s not worth $6M, but for the role that’s kind of what I expected. We’re talking about a guy getting 2 targets a week. 2014-15 Wheaton in PIT (49/696/4 on 83 targets on average) is worth his contract too. I’m not as sure as you are that the evaluations were as bad as their use. Reality is it’s probably somewhere in between.

Watching the level of creativity that real playcallers bring tonight in the SB you can see how much we have been going without, and because of that the harsh truth is that outside of Howard we really have no idea what we already have at the skill positions. Cohen has huge potential but much of it is just that because we didn’t see him nearly enough in space this year. TE is Sims and a bunch of kids. WR is Wheaton and 2 guys, one of whom has been hurt every year and the other coming off an ACL. Nagy is going to look at Wheaton and Sims and he can decide if he can get what Pace thought Loggains should have from them. If he decides they can fill roles in his offense then cool - that’s less things we need to look to replace. We hired him for his offensive expertise, so I’ll defer to him. We’ll find out what he thinks in the next few weeks. 

[WindyCity]

 

[AZBearsFan]

27 minutes ago, WindyCity said:

I would love a rough idea of how you wouldn’t divide up roughly 500 targets?

We need to add options. Maybe it isn’t Bruton, Maybe they trust Daniel Brown more, but we are going to need a 2nd TE who can catch the ball, whoever it is.

Well to start I don’t have any problem with Shaheen getting 100 targets or so. 6 a game is 96. That’s not a ton, really. With his size and speed, especially if he trims down to 265 or so, he’s a mismatch problem we should look to exploit often. 

Cohen should get anywhere between 80-100 targets combined from the backfield and from the slot. Create favorable matchups for him in space. He doesn’t have Tyreek Hill level speed (does anyone right now?) but he has plenty of it, and also runs with power to break tackles that Hill doesn’t have. If he’s not catching 60+ passes next year then he better be hurt. 

Our starting two WR, assuming Meredith and Player X, should combine for about 125-150 targets, and I suspect our WR3 gets 50 or so depending on how many of Cohen’s reps come from the backfield. 

If Howard is again our bell cow I see him getting 50 or so targets. That’s about 3 a game either on screens or check downs.  

That’s 400-450 or so. Figure another 50-100 spread amongst the TE2-3, WR4-6 and RB3 and any changes near the top due to attrition.  

We definitely need to add options. I’m expecting we add a starting caliber WR in FA and guys in the draft and/or FA to fill WR3/4 roles. I think we replace Sims with a cheaper version of the same guy (keep finding myself liking Darren Fells for that role) and RFA Brown to be our more receiving oriented TE2/3. I also think we look to upgrade on Cunningham with a guy with a higher ceiling as a runner. I wouldn’t hate a better FB but think Burton is adequate. 

[AZBearsFan]

17 minutes ago, WindyCity said:

 

[WindyCity]

100 targets is a lot for a TE only 6/32 have 1 TE getting that much work.

100 targets for your #1 WR is pretty standard 24/32.

Cohen getting 100 targets would be high, but I think he will be playing WR a decent amount. But 100 targets is a lot for a RB, 3/32 teams did that last season. The Chiefs only threw 114 passes to RBs and that is withba starter who can catch.

[AZBearsFan]

9 hours ago, WindyCity said:

100 targets is a lot for a TE only 6/32 have 1 TE getting that much work.

100 targets for your #1 WR is pretty standard 24/32.

Cohen getting 100 targets would be high, but I think he will be playing WR a decent amount. But 100 targets is a lot for a RB, 3/32 teams did that last season. The Chiefs only threw 114 passes to RBs and that is withba starter who can catch.

I have Cohen getting those 100 about 50/50 backfield/slot. That’s basically 3 from each per game on average. 500 pass attempts is about 32 per game. About 20% of those going to Cohen might be a bit high, but I think it’s close, especially if he’s gonna he split out a lot. Might be a bit high on Shaheen but if he’s our 16-game starter in this scheme he’s probably at 80-100, with the variance going to the starting WR. You asked for a rough idea and that’s what I gave. If I knew who each of the players was I could probably be a bit more specific in my best guess.