Adrian Phillips is on a 3 year 12.75 million extension. He has a $4.5 million dollar cap hit. That's 34th in the NFL in APY. He's getting paid starter money and plays less than 25% of the snaps.
Jalen Mills is making 2.5 million and plays less than 25% of the snaps.
The best available FA WR was Jakobi Meyers. He received the most guaranteed money and has 16 receptions 166 yards 2 TDs in 2 games so far. Most teams would re-sign a 26 year old WR2 instead of throwing money to a zone beater slot WR.
They guaranteed $8.7 million to Reiff, Anderson & McDermott. None of them can play. Orlando Brown Jr. was available & received 31 million guaranteed. A franchise LT was available and they didn't want to pay him.
Nobody is arguing not drafting Gonzalez & White. I was pumped when they drafted both & was surprised White made it to round 2. Did they need another box safety at pick 76 though? Their resource management has been questionable on the offensive side of the ball IMO.
That's short money for Phillips and Mills in this day and age. That's not much. And it doesn't change the fact they signed low contracts and their prior teams didn't make much of an effort to keep them.
How does this translate into "would start for other teams"? It doesn't. People are exaggerating the investment here. These are depth pieces.
Meyers is a slot WR as well, but when it comes to production, JuJu had the #s over him--I don't really care to have this argument anyway since we are not talking about difference makers. MY POINT: they were the best available. This board was ROUNDLY behind the idea of improving with a guy who was much better regarded at the position. It's hypocritical to now say there was no attempt to use resources at the position in FA.
As for Orlando Brown, I posted here how he's performing for his new team (very badly) and that the fans are calling it a huge bust at big money. Not as bad as McGlinchey, but some of these guys are tying up $87m for the next several years and they suck.
There are actually people arguing Zay Flowers over Gonzalez. I've discussed this 2x on this board with 2 different people.
As for Mapu, I have no idea how he'll turn out, but I would not say for certain that the WRs taken after Mapu are going to be better than Demario Douglas and Kayshon Boutte. In other words, this isn't an argument for today.
And obviously they went 3 OL in a row right after Mapu so we're not talking about misuse of resources here. The next 5 players after Mapu were all OL and WR--so, say we don't take Mapu; it's likely we end up with most of the same 5 OL and WRs anyway.
The main criticism I see is that we didn't take Pickens and instead we took Thornton. That's fair. But I don't see this as a misallocation of resources.
We're going to the well AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN on WRs, TEs and OLs. We've really expended a lot of money (FA) and draft picks.
The problem is that you have to hit on them in the draft or you're not getting one (with the exception of freakin' Tyreek Hill, who would've been a great trade if he wanted to come here, but on the other hand I'm not making the Jaylen Waddle trade if I'm the Patriots [not that they were even in such a position]).
