[Dam8610]

Originally Posted by Chaka

Thank you. As far as your first point is concerned, to be fair the RBs Gettleman drafted (Saquon Barkley and Christian McCaffrey) have worked out pretty well, so it's hard to fault him for those picks - particularly if he wasn't enamored with any of the available QBs in last year's draft. If the guy was making wild picks and reaching for players instead of taking obvious upgrades, then I'd place less weight in his decision making. So while I don't question that you're right that this decision comes from the GM, it doesn't really address my original question of whether the decision he made (not to tag Collins) causes any concern. From what I've read (and admittedly it's a fairly small amount of info - I knew next to nothing about Gettlemen until this thread was created), the guy isn't afraid to make unpopular decisions, but they are often proven right in retrospect. So I remain concerned about this.

As far as the importance of the safety position in our defense, I'll defer to you and others who are more knowledgeable than me about the X's and O's. I can accept that a good SS may be more valuable to us than to other teams, but that should mean that the other teams won't be willing to pay top dollar for him, and we should be able to get him more cheaply. Ultimately, it's really a question of how much to pay, rather than whether to sign him. Here's an article I came across when looking up Gettleman info which makes the observation that 7 of 8 best paid safeties are free safeties and that strong safeties are usually paid much less:

https://www.bigblueview.com/2019/3/6...dave-gettleman

So by paying Collins as one of the best paid safeties in the league, we'd be shattering precedent more than most realize. It bears noting that this sort of thing worked out pretty well when we drafted Nelson, of course.

Shattering precedent? The Colts made Bob Sanders one of the highest paid safeties in the NFL.