Our $41M Secondary

farn said:

All of those DBs, at all of those numbers. I would say YES. Yes to all.

As I've said before : Arrington is what he is. A VG slot corner with ST ability. He is short, but it is the coaching that was suspect to have him on Matthews that long in the big game.

The 2014 version is the D I have been dreaming about since 2003-04. I love them all. The DL was solid, the LBs were more than that, and the secondary was easily top two in the league.

Changes will need to take place. VW and Mayo are - at the very least - contract restructure candidates. But the $ being proposed in this thread to keep the secondary together is something I not only can live with : I'd be "where can I sign ?" No to the DBs they've drafted for the last decade (Wilhite, Darius Butler, Dowling, Wheatley, Meriweather, Hobbs, .....) - yes to this group.

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Once again I think it is amazing that there hasn't been so much as a peep out of Foxboro the past 3 weeks. They must be working on restructure and deals with a large number of players and there hasn't even been a rumour that came out of there. I would expect a flurry of new and activity the next 10 days.

mgteich said:

Thank you for your kind words.

Without Miguel's hard work, this kind of analysis would be very, very difficult.

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It's well earned. And I obviously agree on Miguel, there is not a fan base in sports that has a better resource to utilize. He deserves all the credit he is finally getting.

JMC00 said:

Why are you butthurt by those numbers?

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Screw you,

mgteich said:

You are looking at AAV's. I look at likely cap hits.

The hit for Revis is based on Miguel's calks for a $14M a year contract. Miguel's cap hit for 2016 and 2017 was $15.5M. I used a lower 2015 salary and pushed $3M into the future resulting in a $16.5M cap hit.

While I have not as much detail work on the McCourty contract, I suspect that a $5M bonus portion and a 2016 salary of about $4.5M is about right.

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Sorry what is the acronym AAV?

I don't see BB signing a 30YO Revis for Miguel's numbers, Just don't see paying anyone more than Brady. Love Revis but that is just too much money.

patman52 said:

Sorry what is the acronym AAV?

I don't see BB signing a 30YO Revis for Miguel's numbers, Just don't see paying anyone more than Brady. Love Revis but that is just too much money.

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AAV is the average annual value of the contract. It is the sum of all compensation divided by the number of years. Compensation includes bonuses and salary. If incentives are included that fact is noted. AAV is just one part of contract structure.

We can't just look at one year's salary. A player being paid $14M a year on average, might have a first year salary of $1M. This may be fine with the player since he might be getting a $20M signing bonus.

BRADY AND REVIS
Brady's contracts have been fairly complicated. A couple of years ago, he extended for about $9.5M a year, about half of the market value of quarterbacks. In theory, he did this because all of the money was essentially guaranteed. Last year, he signed a restructured deal that raises his salary by a million a year. So, Brady is essentially playing for $10.5M a year under his present contract.

Unless Revis give the patriots the same kind of serious discount that Brady did, Revis will be paid more than Brady, paid by the patriots or someone else. His average compensation has been projected to be anywhere from $12M a year to $16M a year.

None of us knows what the patriots will pay. The estimates here are usually between $13M a year and $14.5M a year. In any case, almost all of consider it a no-brainer for the patriots to want to pay Revis at least the $12M that he received for his 2014 services.

supafly said:

I agree with your overall point about needing to allocate a good portion of funds at a very important position, but I think we're starting to get too far ahead of ourselves. Let's first make sure that it's going to be our secondary this year, let alone what it's going to look like 2 and 3 seasons down the road.

While I agree with yourself and others who state the importance of the position, it's an awful lot of money to dedicate, which is why I'm personally a bit apprehensive. I hope you're right of course.

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One of the reasons for the thread was for all of us to understand what it really means to sign both Revis and McCourty. $41M is a huge portion of cap space for one unit. It is about equal to what we pay foe the passing game. Both of us think that this a reasonable allocation of funds.

HOWEVER, this kind of spending makes it much more of a challenge when we think of long-term contracts for Solder, Jones, Hightower and Collins, next year's issue.
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As a final note, having Revis has been absolutely great. It was like having Moss for 2007. We all want to keep him for another 4 years. And we all expect this to happen.

However, we should be prepared for the possibility that Revis might not be a patriot, and that his roster spot might be used for a much lower quality corner for less than half of his cost.

IMHO, there is a very good reason for the patriots not to have made ANY announcements. The decision about Revis may be affecting lots of other decisions. If Revis is staying and Wilfork is cut, then there is enough money to franchise McCourty and little else until money is freed up. If Revis is going, the immediate pressure is much less.

I may be in the minority here, but in my mind, we franchise gotkowski and let mccourty walk. Plus Next year we get a 3rd round comp pick.

Harmon takes mccourty's place and we draft prewitt in round 2 as harmon's backup.

Ochmed Jones said:

I may be in the minority here, but in my mind, we franchise gotkowski and let mccourty walk. Plus Next year we get a 3rd round comp pick.

Harmon takes mccourty's place and we draft prewitt in round 2 as harmon's backup.

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I think there are 2 reasons why this may not be a good allocation of resources, but it's simply my opinion of course:

1) There's really no reason why the team would have to pay Gostkowski such a high 2015 cap hit by using the franchise tag. I think 4.25 million dollars (approx) is a ton of money for a kicker in terms of cap space. If they cannot reach an agreement with Gostkowski, it may be much more likely that they are willing to roll the dice and move on with someone else who will come cheaper.

2) Coinciding with the first thought, the ability for the Patriots to reach a longer-term deal with McCourty may be much easier in 2016 than it is in 2015, which would make the use of the franchise tag appropriate for this particular year. Of course the goal will to hopefully reach a longer-term agreement by the middle of July once McCourty is tagged, but if that isn't able to happen, the team may be in a better place cap wise for 2016 with a lesser number of important free agents.

According to Miguel's patscap.com pages, the team only has around 94m dollars allocated towards a cap that is expected to be between 150-155 million next season. Obviously, one also has to take into account the total number of players that would be under contract, so it isn't like the team is in a position of luxury next spring, but there is a strong argument that they will have less responsibilities in terms of "important" key free agents to try and retain.

Arrington had a good year no doubt, but when your top two secondary options are due for huge pay increases you might have to lose a good slot corner and draft a replacement.

Interesting discussion. Lots of good responses here. I think we all agree that negotiating and extending Revis is the no-brainer. Does anyone know how much Tavon Wilson makes? He wasn't included in the original list. Why was that? Do we consider him only a STer?

I like him, though being drafted in the second round only to be a very good STer seems disappointing. Can he be a legitimate backup? He seemed to move down to third string this season. I think he can play more in the defense.

DENNard can do more, much more, than he did this season. A strong, tough, competitor. He'll never be elite, but he can play. Arrington played well. I thought he looked like a superstar against the Colts, but looked a bit nervous in the SB. I think that was more of a coaching error. But make no mistake, he didn't play well and the decision to bench him was brilliant. Makes me think he may be on the chopping block a la Mankins and Welker, who had notable bad games or drops on the biggest stage.

Is McCourty indispensable? Nope. We can cut him and survive, esp. if his contract demands are too high.

I like the idea of drafting a WR who can play CB in a pinch, like Troy Brown. That would mean the team should closely at Tony Lippett, in the third to fourth rounds, who lacks the speed but did well in the three-cone drill and has the length and big hands to be a developmental secondary player, where he started his first two years at Michigan State.

mgteich said:

AAV is the average annual value of the contract. It is the sum of all compensation divided by the number of years. Compensation includes bonuses and salary. If incentives are included that fact is noted. AAV is just one part of contract structure.

We can't just look at one year's salary. A player being paid $14M a year on average, might have a first year salary of $1M. This may be fine with the player since he might be getting a $20M signing bonus.

BRADY AND REVIS
Brady's contracts have been fairly complicated. A couple of years ago, he extended for about $9.5M a year, about half of the market value of quarterbacks. In theory, he did this because all of the money was essentially guaranteed. Last year, he signed a restructured deal that raises his salary by a million a year. So, Brady is essentially playing for $10.5M a year under his present contract.

Unless Revis give the patriots the same kind of serious discount that Brady did, Revis will be paid more than Brady, paid by the patriots or someone else. His average compensation has been projected to be anywhere from $12M a year to $16M a year.

None of us knows what the patriots will pay. The estimates here are usually between $13M a year and $14.5M a year. In any case, almost all of consider it a no-brainer for the patriots to want to pay Revis at least the $12M that he received for his 2014 services.

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Well I understand that you can't take one year's cap number and give a thumbs up or down.

My point on Brady was that Revis should not get more "AAV" than Brady over those years. I certainly understand that his cap number "needs" to be more than Brady's yearly salary.

I am OK with a 4 year 53 mill (including the 5mill remaining cap hit) a 12 mill bonus and yearly salaries of 5, 10, 11, & 12. and the first two years guranteed. I understand that it might not get it done
but I think he enjoyed playing here, and may be willing to stay for what amounts to 5% more lifetime
earnings.

I have watched a lot of film on McCourty from this past season. He covers up a lot of sins. I am less convinced that we can just plug someone in and get even 75% of what MxCourty provides. There isn't a honey badger in this draft.

patman52 said:

Well I understand that you can't take one year's cap number and give a thumbs up or down.

My point on Brady was that Revis should not get more "AAV" than Brady over those years. I certainly understand that his cap number "needs" to be more than Brady's yearly salary.

I am OK with a 4 year 53 mill (including the 5mill remaining cap hit) a 12 mill bonus and yearly salaries of 5, 10, 11, & 12. and the first two years guranteed. I understand that it might not get it done
but I think he enjoyed playing here, and may be willing to stay for what amounts to 5% more lifetime
earnings.

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To not pay a top player what is reasonable according to the market, just because that would give him a higher AAV than our QB is the wrong way to look at it, especially when the only reason he would get higher AAV than Brady, is because Brady has taken a below market deal. If anything that allows us to pay players like Revis what their market value is, and get them on the team.

Ochmed Jones said:

I may be in the minority here, but in my mind, we franchise gotkowski and let mccourty walk. Plus Next year we get a 3rd round comp pick.

Harmon takes mccourty's place and we draft prewitt in round 2 as harmon's backup.

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I like Harmon, but what exactly has he done to prove himself worthy of succeeding McCourty? You're really going to pin your hopes on a Chung-Harmon starting tandem with Tavon Wilson and a draft pick as the backups? No offense but that sounds like textbook penny wise, pound foolish personnel management to me.

The Kool Aid drinking on here is hilarious. We have a roster of 53 Hall of Famers and we will win the Super Bowl every year!!

Extend Revis and sign McCourty win championships. Let one of em walk and lose AFCCG's.

203Pat said:

The Kool Aid drinking on here is hilarious. We have a roster of 53 Hall of Famers and we will win the Super Bowl every year!!

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Of course, no one said anything resembling that, but by all means keep tilting at those windmills.

JackBauer said:

Of course, no one said anything resembling that, but by all means keep tilting at those windmills.

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No one has to but if you don't think Duron Harmon and Logan Ryan are the second coming of Ronnie Lott and Deion Sanders then you're a "hater".

203Pat said:

The Kool Aid drinking on here is hilarious. We have a roster of 53 Hall of Famers and we will win the Super Bowl every year!!

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Feel free to back this up. What I'm seeing here is the exact opposite. This thread is about the need to keep their best players because the drop off to guys like Harmon and Logan Ryan is so precipitous, and that's the opposite of people claiming that every player is great. It's also about the high cost of keeping Revis and McCourty and the tough decisions that will lead to in keeping guys like Solder, Hightower, Chandler Jones, and Jamie Collins. That's an intelligent approach to these issues and not unadulterated homerism.

Making snarky remarks is easy, backing them up is tougher, so let's see you back it up champ.

203Pat said:

No one has to but if you don't think Duron Harmon and Logan Ryan are the second coming of Ronnie Lott and Deion Sanders then you're a "hater".

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Show us who said this?