I think it is referring to total dollars over the life of the contract, or guaranteed dollars. Certainly, it is not a one-year number.

That $83m number is the total contract amount. The contracts for Doyle, Sheard and Simon count for almost all of the out-year amounts.

Cheers,

@pfrumors 57s57 seconds ago
Dolphins To Host LB Zach Brown On Visit

@caplannfl
LB Zach Brown to visit with #Dolphins today, per @OmarKelly. Raider and Brown were far apart on $$, sources said.

@Colts 1m1 minute ago
We have signed TE Brandon Williams

Ballard out here signing a lot of JAGs. Which is whatever. Creating competition is his thing. But not holding out hope more than half of these guys even make the roster.

I think that is unlikely.

Hunt is competing for DE5 with McGill but otherwise, the cupboard was pretty bare at most of the spots.

I think all but Hunt will make the 53 since our talent at signed positions was terrible.

Cheers,

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

Competeing with McGill? There's no competition there.

An UDFA could probably beat out Hunt.

Ballard is just filling holes and going all in with the draft.

Most of the recent signees are not making the team except for Spence....maybe.

TE - Brandon Williams - Fighting for a roster spot as the third TE.
C/G - Brian Schwenke - Battling for the right guard spot, primary backup at C and G.
NT - Al Woods - In a competition with David Parry for the starting NT job.
DE - Margus Hunt - Will be in competition with T.Y. McGill and Arthur Jones along with any draft picks, but is renowned as a special teams ace, so probably has that as an advantage over both McGill and Jones.
OLB - Jabaal Sheard - Signed to be our starting OLB and primary pass rush specialist.
OLB - John Simon - Signed to be our starting OLB, with the hope that he will thrive given a chance of being a full time starter.
OLB - Barkevious Mingo - will be in a scrap for the 3rd, 4th or 5th OLB position with Ayers and any draft picks.
ILB - Sean Spence - will be one of our starters in the middle of our defense and should be the best coverage linebacker that we have had in possibly 10 years.
P - Jeff Locke - Almost sure fire starter.

So this free agency we have signed 3 certain defense starters, another guy who will see serious game time in a rotation at NT, and then the other guys are upgrades as backups with regards to anything that we have had in the past 5 years or so.

I like what we have done this offseason, you have to build your team through the draft, and add complimentary pieces to round out the roster.

Just filling out the roster in UFA, rolling over cap space to 2018 for the new coaches, schemes, etc.

These signings make it pretty apparent that Pagano is done.

This is not the comprehensive strategy i was excepting trying to fill all the holes we have.

Again, if you're gonna go all-in with the draft as your sole way of retooling, you better nail your high picks.

Uhh... I want Pagano gone too but cap space has less than nothing to do with coaching changes. It's not like he's sandbagging the season, he's doing what he said he would do in not trying to build through free agency.

"You have to build through the draft"

Doesn't mean you can't sign a difference maker in free agency. Not sure why people can't figure this out

How many true difference makers were there out there? Poe, Gilmore, Hightower....I dunno, you can dd on from there, but none of them move the needle for me.

The reality is, that as the salary cap increases there are far fewer cap strapped teams that can't sign their difference makers.

I hate to say it, but the current CBA, that Jeff Saturday helped to draft, is a disaster in many ways.

I mean, hell, I'd rather have Alshon Jeffery at 1yr @ 8M than the combination of Schwenke, Woods, Williams and Hunt, personally.

The dude spent 30 million and we have the same or more holes on the roster than last year.

Regardless of UFA, if you're going to consistently win in the NFL, you better nail your high picks.

Exhibit A:
Manning, Peyton
Harrison, Marvin
James, Edgerrin
Wayne, Reggie
Clark, Dallas
Glenn, Tarik
Freeney, Dwight
Sanders, Bob

Very true. Which is part of the reason why I believe Ballard signed stopgaps for this season. You don't shoot your wad now if you might bring in a new coach who wants to run a different scheme. You save that money for next offseason.

Sandbagging is not representative of what I said. Ballard is signing stopgaps. That doesn't mean he isn't trying to be competitive this year.

Ballard may agree with you. We don't know what he offered Jeffrey.

@PSchrags
Free agent TE Mychal Rivera is leaving his visit with Jets without signing a deal. Will visit with the Colts in Indy next. @gmfb @NFLonFOX

If that's true, then fire the moron already. I don't see someone intentionally signing average guys just to wait for the next head coach.

It was reported they tried to sign Poe, so it sounds like they DID try to go after at least one big name free agent. They may have tried to offer deals to others, we don't know what all is happening there.

I think that the whole theory of "holding back" on free agency because of a potential new coach is not true at all. While we may be getting a new coach next year (I hope), Ballard has repeatedly told us that "you build through the draft" and that you cannot shortchange that process.

Someone said it earlier, free agency gets you short-term stability but drafting well gives you long-term success.

Grigson built a solid enough team through free agency to get us to three back-to-back-to-back 11-5 season but his terrible drafting then did not deliver long-term success (Werner, Richardson, D'Journ Smith, Dorsett).

You spend a wad on free agency to push you over the top. You don't spend it to get up to stable; you instead sign a bunch of guys who are NFL average or perhaps a bit better than that in lots of position groups and wait to find difference makers in the draft or by developing and retaining your own.

I think someone else's comment recently about how the rising salary cap allows teams to retain their own superstars better and I agree 100% with that.

IMO, there were 5 defensive "difference makers" in free agency that fit a 3-4 defensive scheme: Dontari Poe, Calais Campbell, Dont'a Hightower, Stephon Gilmore and A.J. Bouye. You could probably add Brandon Williams to that list but I don't know if he was a true difference maker.

Poe's best years may be behind him; his production has dropped since his 2014 season and he obviously wanted a lot of money and/or to play for a team much closer to being a contender. Currently, he is rep and not production. We had him in, we offered him what was probably a good long-term contract and he chose elsewhere. It happens.

Campbell is 30 years old. Spending $15m a year on a 30 year old defender is foolish.

Both Bouye and Gilmore would have been good signings, IMO. Davis is in his contract year and we obviously needed a CB2 this year that could become CB1 next year. I would have been good with signing one of them but that also would have contradicted Ballard's "you build up front" concept.

Williams? $10.5m a year to do what he does? Okay, it would have been great to get a NT of his caliber on 1st and 2nd downs but he bring little to the pass rush area and he is getting paid pass rush money. His cap hit is "cheap" at $6m a year but is $11.75m $11.75m, and $12.00m in the final 3 years. No thanks.

Zach Brown? 2 year starter in a 4-3 defense followed by 2 years of injury and little play followed by 2016 where he killed it. Sure-fire difference maker?

Chris Baker? Logan Ryan? Tony Jefferson? Who else was a difference maker?



Lots of folks are complaining not so much about what Ballard has done but moreso that we did not sign "one impact guy" on defense.

Which of those guys would you have spent the money on? We tried Poe and it did not work. Perhaps one of the CBs would have been good given our situation but Ballard obviously did not want the pay that money at the back end yet.

Anyway, I agree that we did not "throw" free agency due to an upcoming coaching change. This appears to be Ballard's plan.

Draft the top 1/3 of your roster
Free Agent the middle 1/3 of your roster
Fill in UDFA/Street the bottom 1/3 of your roster

Cheers,

I like him. 6th round draft pick of the Raiders in 2013. In 4 seasons:

61 games played / 15 games started / 230 targets / 146 receptions / 63.5% catch rate / 1,413 receiving yards / 10 TD

It appears that he played extensively in his first two years with his 2nd season in 2014 being tops in being targeted 99 times. His targets, however, dropped to 46 in 2015 and only 25 in 2016. This blog from Raiders land tells the tale:
Our TE coaches have shown that they can develop TEs. Both Doyle and Swoope have come a long way over the past couple of seasons.

Rivera sounds like a guy that has the ability to succeed, he just needs the coaching and the change to do so. With the Colts playing a lot of 2TE sets, he will get the chance here.

Sign him and the Colts have zero need to look at TE in the draft. The other free agent we signed, Brandon Williams, sounds much more like a Special Teams guy that someone who we think can develop into an offensive weapon. I don't mind him as TE4 but I would like Rivera much better as battling for TE2 duties with Swoope.

Cheers,

It seems to me that by upgrading positions of need to just NFL average skill - when those positions were manned by less than average talent (unless you want to argue that Trent Cole is a better player than John Simon) - you are in fact signing 'impact' players because they will raise the overall talent level of the team. They are not 'name' impact players, I grant you that. But they are experienced players that still have upside that are looking to make a bigger contribution than they were making with their old teams, so I would expect the overall competition level to ratchet up quite a bit, thus making an 'impact'. Would I have loved to land a corner like Bouye? Absolutely. But not at the expense of being unable to address the many needs our talent deficient roster had. The sort of impact player you are looking for is found through the draft. That's where Ballard's strategy will be won or lost, not because some big dollar FA didn't sign here. Just my thought anyway.

I wouldn't even put Bouye on that list. He's a one year starter in a contract year. Reminds me of Alteraun Verner. Tried hard for a year when opposing teams weren't expecting him to be any good. I doubt he ends up worth the contract Jacksonville gave him.

From what I've read/heard Hightower went to see other teams so he could come back to NE with a market-set price to agree on. He never wanted to leave. The Jets offered him $2M more per year than he got with the Pats. He was never going to sign here.

I think it goes back to what I said a while back. Your draft picks take a yr or two to get up to NFL readiness.... not all of them i.e. Kelly... but for the most part as you have players hit FA you have players behind them that were drafted to take their spots. But because of the terrible drafting/draft class of 2013 and poor decision making by Grigson for the most part, there isn't any of those guys to step up so we have to add a lot of players in a lot of positions with this FA period to fill voids. Then you can start building through the draft.

Contrary to what everyone thinks we are not that far off from winning the division. Save a couple of stupid coaching decisions and we win that division last yr.

I think Simon is going to be very good. I like the Spence signing maybe more than most of you do. And I think Sheard and even Mingo will be good transition players to give the draft picks time to develope.

If he is waiting then this is just dumb. The team is being built for a Pagano D and if they have any thoughts of changing that could mean an entire rebuild in a different direction next yr.

I don't' think they have any plans to get rid of Pagano..... until he starts the bad game management BS again this yr.

@RapSheet
Former #Ravens WR Kamar Aiken is expected to sign with the #Colts, source said. A forgotten man in Baltimore with a new home.

Now Aiken is a signing I can get a little excited about. Buying low on decent upside WR who was limited by Joe Flacco's Captain Checkdown offense. Really shined in 2015. Down year (in line w/ Flacco's down year) in 2016. But if you ask any Ravens fan or really even watch any highlights package, this guy is a red zone/possession ace. He's not gonna burn you with speed (Colts have enough of those guys), but strong hands and big, athletic frame.

He's a guy who should help out the Colts a ton in the red zone and in 3rd down packages.

Aiken is by far the best free agent WR we've ever brought in, that I can remember.
Grigson's guys were all problematic in various ways or had been injured. Avery, DHB, that other guy. Aiken is starter level who was def just a forgotten guy in Baltimore.

Excellent post!

I agree. I really like the Aiken signing.

I really wish they would bring in Jared Odrick. He was playing well until he hurt his elbow last yr. Could be a great upgrade at DE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMC0cvucTok

Colts WRs:
5 seasons / 78 games played / 57 games started / 649 targets / 374 receptions / 57.6% catch rate / 5,861 yards / 15.7 average / 30 TD / 5’10”, 183 lbs / T.Y. Hilton
5 seasons / 51 games played / 20 games started / 209 targets / 128 receptions / 61.2% catch rate / 1,539 yards / 12.0 average / 09 TD / 6’02”, 213 lbs / Kamar Aiken
3 seasons / 41 games played / 19 games started / 210 targets / 126 receptions / 60.0% catch rate / 1,484 yards / 11.8 average / 16 TD / 6’02”, 221 lbs / Donte Moncrief
2 seasons / 26 games played / 07 games started / 098 targets / 051 receptions / 52.0% catch rate / 0,753 yards / 14.8 average / 03 TD / 5’10”, 183 lbs / Phillip Dorsett
1 seasons / 14 games played / 02 games started / 034 targets / 019 receptions / 55.9% catch rate / 0,273 yards / 14.4 average / 00 TD / 6’01”, 187 lbs / Chester Rogers

Colts TEs:
4 seasons / 63 games played / 21 games started / 118 targets / 094 receptions / 79.7% catch rate / 0,793 yards / 08.4 average / 08 TD / 6’05”, 254 lbs / Jack Doyle
4 seasons / 61 games played / 15 games started / 230 targets / 146 receptions / 63.5% catch rate / 1,413 yards / 09.7 average / 10 TD / 6’03”, 242 lbs / Mychal Rivera**
2 seasons / 17 games played / 04 games started / 022 targets / 015 receptions / 68.2% catch rate / 0,297 yards / 19.8 average / 01 TD / 6’05”, 246 lbs / Erik Swoope
4 seasons / 45 games played / 01 games started / 011 targets / 006 receptions / 54.5% catch rate / 0,080 yards / 13.3 average / 00 TD / 6’04”, 255 lbs / B. Williams

** Obviously, Rivera is not signed but those are his stats showing that he has about the same play time as Doyle and has been thrown at a WHOLE lot more than Doyle was.

[NOTE: I am NOT saying that Aiken is WR2. That is Moncrief's job to lose. I am saying that Aiken has a nice amount of playing experience when compared to our other WRs not named Hilton.]

That would be a pretty nice pass catching group for Andrew in 2017. Young, but nice. No need for any attention at WR or TE unless BPA is just too unbelievable.

Cheers,

The main issue being is that he has only ever played as a 4-3 Undertackle playing in a 1-gap system both at MIA and JAX.

I am not positive that his skills translate into a 3-4 2-gap 5-tech DE well.

Cheers,

FWIW, I agree with this. What you said here and what I've said in this thread are not mutually exclusive.

Ian Rapoport‏Verified account @RapSheet

FA DE Jared Odrick, who passed a physical on his #Patriots visit, is one to watch on if #Giants don’t get Hankins back. He’ll take visits


If he is possibly replacing Hankins he would fit...if we are interested in Hankins....


http://nep.247sports.com/Bolt/Report...iants-51881071

He should be a good one with your blessing ... :cool:

Brown Fires Agent
 

@pfrumors
Linebacker Zach Brown Fires Agent http://www.profootballrumors.com/201...wn-fires-agent …

Brown: "Why am I not getting the money I want? I want Hightower money!"

Agent: "Well, the market softened. No one else is willing to pay that."

Brown: "Why am I not getting the money I want? I want Hightower money!"

Agent: "Ummm.....well, how about a one year prove it deal?"

Brown: "Why am I not getting the money I want? I want Hightower money!"

Agent: "Wait a minute. Is this a recording? The market softened!"

Brown: "Why am I not getting the money I want? I want Hightower money!"

Agent: "Gahhhhhh, I hate prima-donnas. Why do I get prima-donnas?"

Brown: "Your fired."

Agent: "Hello! Welcome to Sports Representation R Us! We are glad you are here."

Brown: "Why am I not getting the money I want? I want Hightower money!"






Cheers,