I've stated that I'm confident that this gets done for 3 years in the $14MM/yr range. But I've been wrong before.
And if I am, let me remind you that we instantly get $20MM in cap relief, and $20MM can by a lot of good football players. You could possibly get Terrance Knighton AND Byron Maxwell for that kind of money.
In the end, we should all know by now, that football is a game of numbers. It was the first lesson one of my mentors told me right after I got my first HS HCing job. Mediots have never understood that simple fact. They are like moths, drawn to the flame of a big name.
That was the fatal flaw with all those good teams we had in the mid to late 90's. A mediot could look on paper and see a very talented team.....one player deep. Now more than ever the NFL is not built to succeed that way. Last season we lost 4 key players (Mayo, Ridley, Dobson and Easley), and we had probably had the best luck we've had with injuries in a decade. Those good teams in the mid 90's weren't able to survive the injuries.
BB has always attempted to build his teams such that his bottom 25 players on the roster are going to be better than yours. Its part of the reason we've survived those years when we've had crippling injuries and managed to have great years (relative to the rest of the league).
That $20MM could go a long way to strengthening the team in other ways to cover up some of the drop off in CB play that could come with the loss of Revis. Who knows? Like I said I hope he comes back, but I know it will be at a cost. And if he doesn't, I'm not going to jump off the bandwagon, like most of the Mediots will, because his absence will make it possible to get stronger elsewhere.
Here's one for the offensive geeks. Revis goes elsewhere and with that cap room the Pats go out and get Iupati and Fitzgerald. Now I personally wouldn't do that, but it certainly would make a lot of people here happy.
There truly is only one indispensable player on this team in 2015 and that's Tom Brady. Some might think Gronk is too, but we've proven we can get to AFCCG's without Gronk. Christ we've proven we can get to the Superbowl with a historically BAD defense and come within one play of winning it. And that's ALL because of how BB builds his teams. You can't afford to rely on a few big money guys, because they are human.