Quote:
Originally Posted by Chaka
Collins seemingly is a player that checks most/all of the boxes of a player that Ballard should be interested in, but here are a few concerns I see with signing him to the kind of deal some of you are talking about (5 yr/65M, etc)
1. Is it concerning to anyone that the Giants - the team who should know his capabilities best - thought the franchise tag number was too much for him? I didn't get the sense that this was a situation where the Giants hated him personally or were forced to allow him to leave because they couldn't afford him - they just thought it would be an overpayment.
2. Is this the best use of our resources? Several have pointed out that safety isn't the greatest need on the team. So paying big money to a player who, even if he performs well, will only incrementally improve the defense may not be the best strategy. We could get better bang for our buck by spending that $13M to improve the areas where greater improvement can be achieved - even if it isn't a high profile signing.
3. Related to point #1, the safety position has been devalued in recent years as several have pointed out. Lots of good players have gone unsigned or signed greatly reduced contracts. The signs suggest this may happen again this year, given the number of seemingly high quality safeties that will be flooding the market. So is it necessary to pay top dollar for this guy? Is he that much better than the rest of the safeties?
I'm asking these questions out of honest curiosity. Usually the top free agents end up being overpaid, sometimes massively so, and as a consequence I'm perhaps biased against signing those guys. I know one of the responses is likely to be that we've got lots of cap space, which is true, so why not sign him? But I believe Ballard when he says that the cap space will start to disappear when he starts resigning the Colts own free agents, so I expect him to keep a large chunk of that cap space intact this offseason.
|
Signing Collins is not critical but it's fine. He's a young All-Pro with a great team-first attitude and only 5 games missed in 4 seasons. We have the cap space to sign him to whatever he could possibly want and still have just as much flexibility as we need going forward.
That said, based on what we've seen so far, I don't think safety needs to be a top draft pick or FA to be successful. There are other safeties available in FA that will be cheaper and despite Collins talent I'm not convinced he will be in position to impact that many plays. If we were in a tighter cap situation I would say the money would be far-better spent on a front 7 player.
If we do sign him, that will tell me that either Eberflus wants to do some things differently with the DBs, or that Ballard is relaxing his approach a bit to FA.