http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap1000000210637/article/vonta-leach-my-time-with-baltimore-ravens-is-up Will most likely get released soon
In place of what? I love both those guys and hated to lose them. But they weren't brought back for a reason: namely, they ate up too much cap space. It's easy to say the Texans would have been better with those guys, but where was that money going to come from?
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Fullback Vonta Leach released by the Ravens according to his agent Ralph Vitolo who says Leach's 1st choice would be 2 return to the Texans.</p>— Mark Berman (@MarkBermanFox26) <a href="https://twitter.com/MarkBermanFox26/status/344480423407144961">June 11, 2013</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
I'm sure he knows Greg Jones is now with us, but would we be willing to slide Jones back and bring Vonta in as the starter as he's familiar with the system and plays? Would we keep 2 (well-paid) fullbacks on the roster? Also would he take a "hometown" pay cut, to come back to us? I know lots of questions on this one.
We have $2.8 million in cap room according to this official report. I don't think we've signed the majority of our rookies, have we? Hopkins will probably create about a 1.3 million cap hit alone. I don't know what Vonta's vet minimum figure is but it seems like getting him at even that price would be difficult to get done.
Not relevant to this year, but a $3MM Vonta Leach may have been more useful to this team blocking at the line than our $5MM blocking WR was blocking at the edges, given that an efficient running game was a problem for much of last year. Any of the backup WRs already on the team could have provided the same pass-catching utility as KW.