There-in lay the rub.
In you're opinion what are the odds he plays like "it's 2015 again"?
I'm not an oddsmaker, but I am appreciative of the character reviled as "Bill the GM," and his apparent risk-management approach to football.
We don't know what's in his mind, but when he can get a vet player with super star potential on a super cheap deal he does it. Some stick, some don't. Some get it, some don't.
The cheaper they are, the more shots he can take. He'll put some real money on the table in other situations, and sometimes get burned. (See Antonio Brown)
But these 1-year close to free deals only have to pan out once every few years to be worth pursuing as a strategy.
He can preach all he wants about every year being different, but I doubt he's not thinking along the lines of "shots on goal." Not every time they become possible, but when the spread between upside and present market value is high enough, it becomes a no-brainer. He knows that these days a QB can last many more years than Cam has endured, and Cam's upside, paired with a painless buy-in, is a great match. I don't know whether he sees full 2015 form as a possibility. I think he might be there for Stidham to have to earn it. I'm clueless b/c Stidham has no NFL track record.
In the 2000ies, we hit with Randy Moss and Corey Dillon... I am going by addled memory, but I believe both came in on cap friendly (i.e., backloaded for Dillon, cheap 1 "prove it" year for Moss) deals after they started being thought of as toxic at their old teams. We then whiffed with Ochocinco (again, I believe that was an eminently absorbable cap hit).
These guys can correct my money memories on those examples. I dont have a strong impression on how expensive or cheap Welker was the same year we got Moss, but I'm pretty sure he was cheap for what we got
Bill the GM accepts that some stuff will not work out. He tries to protect against downside risk, valuate players by their worth to the team for the terms of the deal, etc., and have a "decay" assumption that makes something like sense. I think this last accounts for his disbelief that Brady would finally get fed up with him
Personally I thought the Panthers would (and should) definitely retain Cam under the contract that was in place --- that they didn't, combined with the fact he didn't get a legit offer from any other NFL team....
....raises a lot of questions.
So here's a question, in the somewhat recent past who is on the list of players BB extended a lifeline to that nobody else in the NFL would touch?
Which of them stuck for more than a cup of coffee?
I went back to the less recent past, because at least going by memory, that's "playing the hits." For every Randy Moss and Wes Welker, you can absorb quite a few OchoStinkos, as long as the price is right (Antonio Brown, not so much... that one just baffles me in retrospect. I think his off-field stupidity was worse than BB thought and he was blindsided by the extent of the crapstorm.)
So, what I think is, if you'll play a year on a cheap deal, you can let your skills dictate your future in NE. The Pats get an obvious advantage. The player in question gets to renegotiate down the line if he outperforms a very outoperform-able deal... and might get a ring.
In Cam's case, he has the possibility of following up the work of the GOAT QB, but he'd have the advantage of playing for the GOAT coach. So, it all is what it is... a familiar-ish fact pattern seems to be emerging. They at least think he can be worth a quite low figure, if he hits incentives. I am sure they are rooting for him to hit the incentives.
Greg Olsen says we got the greatest deal in the universe, which means precisely squat until games are played. (Probably in 2021 if you ask me.)
