He just wanted to tweet @Vrabes "All your tight ends are belong to us!"
I was puzzled too about why the high guaranteed money. The simple explanation is that you get payday over with, lock down the basic consistent cast of characters with the "cheap money," then as the cap grows, your wiggle room grows around that core group. And it's a big group.
I mean, the usual trade-off is, you can promise an enormous amount down the road, or there can be a smaller guaranteed amount.... and players all want the true guaranteed money.
So the big locked down guaranteed dollars
should work both ways. Your huge-ish 50M, 12.5 m/yr. guaranteed contract (either HH or Jonnnu, don't remember which one took the 4 year deal) keeps you in town through 2024, and by then the theory is that TEs making 12.5m are a bargain.
This is a fairly interesting article on "the spending spree," if nobody's quoted it.
The Patriots shocked the NFL by throwing big money at big names in free agency. Here's an inside look at how it played out and why they did it.
www.espn.com
Note how the 3/5 guaranteed amount shows up in the early deals with Jonnu, Godchaux (cheapish 2 yr 9M guaranteed, 16M deal), and Judon. That proportion (roughly) comes back with the Agholar deal then Hunter Henry. A lot of guys in between are getting like 1/3 guaranteed. Lawrence Guy signs toward the end of the spree for like $3M guaranteed... and 27M total.
So BB wanted to win the competition specifically for Hunter Henry, Jonnu, Godchaux (to an extent) Judon, and Agholar. Those are his ride or dies out of this batch. Godchaux, not even. Somebody correct me if anyhbody else got paid at, say, more than half guaranteed. I think except these guys, the numbers were around 1/3 guaranteed and less.
They definitely targeted those guys, and they targeted Jonnu BEFORE Henry. They were in a definite "buy now" mode, and that has to do w the caponomics. I guess the idea is that if you spend it and can unspend it later, you didn't win the cap game after all. On those 5 guys, they wanted to get the deal done in a way that it is hard to even un-do. Well, except Godchaux. It ain't cheap compared with a less guaranteed deal, but we could cut him loose. It's just one year.
The Rosenhaus connection, of course, comes into play.
I think we're not seeing yet all that we will see out of Jonnu, or we wont see wht BB thought he would see, and might still think he will one day see. I think it's clear he wanted Mac to have 2 pass catching TE targets as he grew. Interestingly, he also spent guaranteed money on a vertical guy, agholar. (just 2 years, 16M of 26 guaranteed). Judon was just as pricy as the TEs. Those appear to be the ones he is really sure he wants for a few years (The TEs and Judon, 3yrs, 4, and 4.) Agholar and Godchaux are 2-year contracts, so they're already escapable. Bourne cost us 5.25M guaranteed on a $22.5M deal. I hope everybody is okay w the $3.38M we spent on JC Jackson
.... who I think is gone soon. But who knows.
So naturally, some guys cost $3m and perform like they're worth $20M, some guys cost 12.5M/yr and perform like $3M.
More hits than misses by a lot, one of the biggest spenders when it's actually a good year to spend, landed a franchise QB in the draft. Bill the GM did okay for himself overall, apparently.
But walk through that group in the article... it's interesting that they can't just blow things up in general, but that's mainly weighted toward 2 TEs and 1 OLB. Those are the backbreakers if we bail on them. I don't think we need to bail on Godchaux or Agholar, FWIW, the other guys in the 3/5ish guaranteed club.
We're not a match for the Bills. We looked like we were for like 5 minutes then ran out of gas.