Tagging Jones and signing Pierce

[Kray007]

I see a lot of people in the media are arguing that Ballard got it wrong, that he should have tagged Pierce and let Jones dangle his toes in free agency. The premise is that Jones, coming off an injury plagued season would ply his goods, learn that teams didn’t value him as highly as he valued himself, then slunk back to Indy, chastised, tail between his legs.

Personally, I think Ballard got it right, but I’m interested in what the rest of you think.

I think that, if you don’t have a Quarterback, you don’t have anything. I think that, even with the injuries, Daniel Jones would have been the hottest name in free agency. If he had awakened this morning as a free agent, he would have been packing his bags, this afternoon.

Someone would have offered up a mega million dollar contract, and no one from his camp would have bothered with the courtesy of inquiring whether the Colts might match it. In the NFL, teams don’t do the dirty work of negotiating contracts for other teams. When they negotiate with a free agent and reach a deal, they expect him to sign on the bottom line.

That’s why it’s unlikely that Jones gains much traction in free agent talks with other teams. 31 teams know that, whatever the final number turns out to be, Ballard will suck it up and match.

At this exact moment, it’s impossible to know just what these deals mean in terms of the cap. We presume, but don’t know that Jones will ink a new contract. We don’t know how Pierce’s deal is structured, what his first year cap number will be.

Right now, after trading Pittman, they’re $23 Million, and change, under the cap. That will, of course, change when Pierce’s number emerges from the mist.

That having been said, it’s hard to see much how advantage could have been gained from prioritizing Pierce. His new contract’s average annual value is $28.5 Million. The cost of tagging him would have been right around that number, so its a wash. Hanging the transition tag on Jones, however, might have saved us a bundle…depending on how it plays out. At the very most, we’re on the hook for $37 Million and change. Without the certainty of his return, Ballard, facing a hard deadline, might have caved and met his agent’s demand of $50 Million.