mgteich

It is clear that the market has cleared at very high levels, likely because of the great amounts of cap room available and the fact that this must be spent by next year (at least on a cash basis).

IMHO, Belichick has yet to grossly overpay for anyone, although Slater got a very nice contract. As always, we have "lost" lots of players to other teams. Perhaps we could have gotten some of these player if we were to win the bidding war. IMHO, few have been signed that we had a chance to sign at a reasonable amount. Sometimes, we bid and lost (e,g, Reggie Wayne). After all, we cannot win all close contests for players, if this were even close, especially re-signs.

CONCLUSION #1
We may need to "overpay" some for players we want. We did so for Slater. Perhaps, we will for Lloyd and/or Landry.

CONCLUSION #2
It is NOT clear that Belichick will grossly overpay anyone.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
What will we do with Welker? Will we pay him the 2012 market value for his services? Will we even come close?

Apparently, Welker refused a 2-year $16M deal as being much too low for this market. He was right.

IMHO, we should do what is necessary to sign Welker to a 2 or 3 year deal at amount we normally would not pay. If we sign a 3 year deal, we should be able to make the contract cap-friendly for 2012. A restructure in 2013 will push even more money to 2014 when more cap money will be available.

BTW, I don't think we trat Welker right if we simply ASSUME that he will sign the franchise tag, participate in of-season activities and play out the season on the tag. If this were really, true, we shouldn't even bother overpaying. We should simply franchise him again next year.

kurtinelson

I don't like the low balling of Welker. He needs to be on this team with TB for the next 3-4 years. 2 years 16 million is a joke. I'd easily go 4 years 24 million garaunteed.

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Fencer

If the Pats were to offer Welker a two-year contract, fully guaranteed, at exactly franchise tag numbers, he should take it. Why?

• Because he would get his second year guarantee a year early.
• Because the Pats don't have anybody else coming due they'll want to use it on next year (with apologies to Chung and Vollmer), so they can use it on him.

But he wouldn't be excited about the deal, because he's indeed one of the top receivers in the league, not overpaid if he receives franchise tag money.

So that's a reasonable starting point for negotiations (and it's a lot more than 2 years, $16 million). Call it $23-25 million.

Can the Pats get him to sign a 3-4 year deal, with a guarantee no bigger than that? Perhaps. But if so, the total compensation would need to be pretty generous.

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satz

I have to disagree on your base of assumption.

1) The owners agreed to these cap numbers and profit sharing... X dollars they make has to be spend on players who make the money.This is agreed as a fair deal by both parties Yet you claim its not FAIR and CBA has to be redone the owners can keep more money and players make less.

2) In any market the value is set by what one is willing to pay ,but you want to Owners to come up with a illegal pricing fixing approach to FA market or let a 3rd body fix the dollar value.... illegal as hell in any capital economy.

3) You want the owners to break there own CBA floor and screw the players of there share of the money.

4) In a true FA with Wes , you let him walk and see if you can out bid your competition but ofcourse you think that is not FAIR .

Best plan trade all picks to 6th and 7th rounders and draft a tonne of cheap players,
trade all the good players too. then they can spend as little as possible,

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