A handful of thoughts on this topic:
1) Why do people pay any attention to Felger? He's intentionally trolling you and making money hand over fist in the process. He works the same way as any internet troll here, people get all riled up and call incessantly just to yell at him. His ratings are huge, and he barely has to do anything except repeat the same tired takes. Instead of being insightful he gets higher ratings purposefully antagonizing you. If anyone is the idiot it's you for listening to him, he's the guy who is smart enough to take advantage of you.
2) In terms of the "cap is crap" there is some validity behind that point, but not to the extent that someone like Felger takes it to. Over time your cash to cap ratio should be somewhere slightly north of 1.00. Some years you'll be way ahead of it others you'll be under it. Prorating bonuses, gtd. salaries, incentives, and whatever else all has an opportunity cost to it. You're moving the accumulation of those numbers on the cap around, but ultimately the money is still going out the door and will hit your cap eventually. That is why the 1 year look that someone like Felger consistently does is inherently disingenuous. He basically says: "look if we convert this to a bonus, we opened up 5 mil in cap space" which doesn't then account for the $5 million in non-moveable money on the future caps. There is an opportunity cost to everything, but Felger doesn't acknowledge that which is part of the reason why I think people get indignant about this whole thing.
3) The criticism that the Pats are cheap isn't fair, but the opinion that the Patriots are too conservative probably is more accurate. The Pats have paid out some pretty large contracts over the years. Taking Gronk and Brady out of the equation because they represented about as close to zero risk must signs as you'll ever see, Mankins, Mayo, McCourty, and Wilfork have all received near market value contracts, some of which could have been considered overpayment at the time. Why did these 4 guys get paid where others who probably were more talented like Talib, Revis, Seymour, and Samuel were shown the door? They were simply the safer investments, and were better fits to maintain the culture of hard work in the building. All 4 of those guys did everything the right way, and by paying them instead of the other guys provides a carrot to the other young players that to get paid here you have to put the work in. Another example of this would probably be the restructures of Vollmer and Nink in the offseason. It's not a cheap move, but it's rewarding guys who are doing things the right way. Which was probably needed after giving Mankins and Wilfork the boot in the last 8 months.
Guys like Revis, Seymour, Talib, and Samuel were all outstanding talents in the primes of their career when they left. However, there were bigger concerns with some of them like Effort, Injury, Age, Personal Issues, and punctuality.
The dividends of those guys is potentially way higher than the the other guys, but carried far more risk. The Pats went with the more sure bets. This makes sense if you consider who the parties were that were making the decision. Kraft & BB in all likelihood are not as championship hungry as other GM's and Owners. That isn't to say they don't care about winning, but it's hard to want to win a championship a much as someone who has never won when you have 4 sitting on your mantle. It's much better for the Pats to win 12 every year and have an outside shot at a title than to take big risks to try to win it all, and potentially have if lead to a missed playoff season.
4) With all that being said it's hard for me to like the way the Pats handled the 2015 offseason so far. I do think they've played it a little too conservatively. After 2015 they only have about $63 million in outstanding guarantees about 2/3 of which is tied up in Brady, Gronk, and McCourty who probably aren't going anywhere. In other words only $10 million more than what the Dolphins will have tied up in Suh. So they have a ton of cap flexibility going forward if they're so inclined.
We let go of an elite talent that allowed us to run our defense in a way that has brought us success. Despite BB's insistence on letting #1 CB's go we have looked a lot better defensively with them than without them. I would have taken my chances with McCourty gone rather than Revis going. Obviously that comes with the assumption that he would have come back with a similar offer from the Pats which nobody besides Revis really knows. It is still fair to say that we weren't as aggressive as we could have been in trying to retain him.
Even with the loss of Revis we still could have been more aggressive as well. We have real needs at 3DRB, OG, and CB and have a ton of future cap flexibility. I'm not so comfortable going into the draft with 3 needs quite that glaring. Sheard was a low risk move, but with how much the potential cap hits are over the next 2 years, I think we could have gotten someone much better if we were willing to throw a few more years and some more guarantees behind a contract for someone else.
