Well, he let Richard Seymour slip away, too, in his prime.
There is enough cap space to sign them all, for most teams. But BB is notorious for spending disproportionate share of his cap space on the #20-50 players on his roster... the Alan Branches, Brandon Boldens, Nate Ebners and Marcus Cannons of the team. The general calculus is that the a single $10mm player is not as important to the roster than eight $1.2mm players... or maybe a $4mm and a few $2mm players.
This is part of the Next Man Up philosophy of team building... you plan to lose players to injury, and design the roster to be deep. Rather than breaking the bank on a free agent like Suh, you bring in Branch and Siliga and Hicks and consider yourself ahead.
So, sure, BB could sign them all. But he's unlikely to do so, because if he does the overall structure of the team will be more like what Dallas is suffering under, where once their stars get hurt, they're just S.O.L. It's just never been his mode of roster building.
Key to me is that Sheard is making half(?) or two-thirds(?) of what Jones is like to demand in Free Agency... and despite what Jones brings to the team, Sheard is the better value. Ninkovich is better value, too. And Grissom + Flowers is on their rookie contracts and deserve snaps. Jones is an impactful player, but... unless he's willing to go under-market to stay in Foxboro, I think he's gone.
Collins and Hightower are the keepers, for me. BB will sign a few veterans any given year, who are elite talents and the core leaders of the team... here I'm thinking Mayo, Wilfork, Mankins, Brady, McCourty. A countable few, single digit number of rare players... the Lawrence Taylors of his team, so to speak. In this generation, I think Hightower, Collins and Gronk are the ones he is interested in building the rest of his team around, the rare and irreplaceable talent.
