Great post, very informative.
I would argue that Solder's value is increased considerably by the extreme difficulty of finding decent Left Tackles. To add a little more info, I pulled up a 2017 ranking of Left Tackles (yes, I know that is very arbitrary, but it is a start). The ranking of the top 12, along with the round they were drafted and their age is:
1) Tyron Smith, First Round Pick 9, Age 26
2) Joe Thomas, First Round Pick 3, Age 32
3) Jason Peters, Undrafted, Age 35
4) Trent Williams, First Round Pick 4, Age 29
5) Terron Armsted, Third Round Pick 75, Age 26
6) Andrew Whitworth, Second Round Pick 55, Age 35
7) David Bakhtiari, Fourth Round Pick 109, Age 25
8) Donald Penn, undrafted, Age 34
9) Duane Brown, First Round Pick 26, Age 31
10) Joe Staley, First Round Pick 28, Age 32
11) Russell Okung, First Round Pick 6, Age 29
12) Nate Solder, First Round Pick 17, Age 29
My interpretation of this chart is that Left Tackles largely require extremely high draft capital or a gigantic payout (just look at the $55M contract with $31M guaranteed given to Matt Kali, who really
isn't a decent tackle). First let's throw out players that are near retirement as they clearly have less value: Jason Peters (Age 35), Andrew Whitworth (Age 35) and Donald Penn (Age 34).
Then of the remaining 9 top Left Tackles left on the list, only two outliers weren't drafted in the first Round (Terron Armsted and David Bakhtiri) and four of the nine were drafted in the top nine of the First Round.
I have long thought that the high cap hit of Nate Solder (second behind Brady) was no accident, because of the difficulty of obtaining decent Left Tackles via the draft or in free agency. If Solder could be convinced to return for a couple of years (or even longer) I think he would be well worth the money.
https://athlonsports.com/nfl/nfl-offensive-linemen-rankings
