Yes; it's a negotiation. But he didn't stop taking calls because Denver wasn't offering enough money; he stopped taking calls because: Sure... Also... And.. Plenty of others, including the Broncos making a pre-free agency offer of 3/$45MM. They wanted him; any other story is bullshit. They wanted him. But he did not want to be there.
His "rookie" years were '06-'08, when he rebuilt the roster and weathered injuries (specifically to Schaub) to push the team toward respectability. But he blew a huge opportunity in '09 and his (and the organization's) failure to build the defense cost him greatly in '10. I liked him and stayed on his ship longer than virtually everybody but '11 and '12 were far more exceptions with him, unfortunately... Yes; to the utter dismay of the coaching staff, who thought - and begged - the players to spend their time, you know, practicing and preparing, rather than ordering and modeling letterman jackets. Coaches were PEE-ssed. And they knew that was the beginning of the end.
That's a more reasonable contract. The initial offer was around $40 million with an undisclosed porton of that guaranteed. $72 million with $37m guaranteed is a different story. Just dumb. Let's not act like you don't know analytics. Overpaying guys is a sure way to make your team mediocre. But maybe the Texans don't know that. B'Ob goes out and overpays for the guys he wants every year.
They made the initial offer before they knew there would be issues/competition. Once the Texans became serious contenders, they upped their offer and were prepared to pay him market value. Again, the circumstances were unprecedented. Twenty-five year old QBs with potential + NFL experience/success almost never make it to the open market. I just don't think his contract is problematic; in fact, it's actually a brilliantly structured deal, given the circumstances.
I'd say you described Cowher pretty well here...and he's a hard ass that creates a culture of accountability and performance...something this franchise lacks.
Here's another thing- the team will be bottom 10 in the league in salary cap space for the next 3 years. 2020 a lot of the bad contracts roll off and we're 4th in cap space. What coach is gonna want to come here and have little flexibility to shape the team the first couple years? They most likely bring the same team back next year. There's only so much a coach can do with the level of personnel.
No they won't. As of right now, they're projected to be ~$9MM under the cap. They can cut Brown, Cushing, Joseph, Clark and Bergstrom and net ~$30MM. They'll also, I'm sure, be able to structure Hopkins' deal to be '17 cap friendly, if necessary. And if OSweiler is indeed a bust, they can clear $15MM in '18 just by releasing him.
According to spotrac, we have less cap space than 20+ teams for the next 3 years. Sure, we can cut guys but then we have to replace them somehow. And every team can cut guys. Plus haven't exactly hit on a ton of draft picks, so we don't have guys on rookie deals ready to take the spots of departing veterans. http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/cap/
Yes; today. Are you under the mistaken impression those numbers are frozen? I just presented a plausible path to them freeing up ~$30MM in cap space.
Every team is capable of freeing up space. And the guys you mentioned are key players on the team. As it stands today, we are a bad team with limited flexibility to get better.
Cushing and Joseph are well past their primes... and playing at below replacement levels currently. Brown is a step up from Clark... but he'd already shown signs of regression even when healthy. There's plenty of flexibility to improve. But they do have to select the right guys.
Except Simon, Hal, and presumably Martin would be candidates to do just that... to supplement the draft hits of McKinney and Merciless.
I haven't gone through the contract year by year. Maybe there's enough dead weight to cut for the next regime to really rebuild
Yeah, I'm not sure you have a full enough grasp of how the NFL salary cap works to have that discussion... especially when you're still throwing around full contract figures (rather than guaranteed money or true cap figures) when trying to figure out what is really a bad contract and what isn't. There's plenty of dead weight... with low cap figures. They can literally either build upon the set skill positions here over the next two years via the draft (which is what was attempted with their o-line selections)... or they can start all over.
Yeah, i wouldn't go that far. Every team has "plenty of dead weight." Fact of the matter is there really is neither that much talent nor cap space on this team. When you spend tons of money on mediocre free agents and trade several draft picks for busts, this is the situation you end up in. It's not enough to say "well we can cut cushing and hey we drafted mckinney." That's not gonna make you a great team. Of course I've been saying this was the danger since last year and here we are. You can look here and try to find all this money we can supposedly open up by cutting guys. All I see is Cushing and possibly Brown (who we look like crap without). http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/houston-texans/cap/2017/
Again with the trading draft pick jargon? How many times a day do you post that? You may be the only one losing sleep over lost 4th and 5th round picks. Meanwhile, back in reality... the fact that they hit on first day picks more often than not, and the fact that they don't have the albatross Drew Brees/Rivers/Peterson contracts that come with the huge cap figures that literally can put roster movement to a halt... indicates flexibility. Not every team has dead weight. Not every team can just cut players without ramifications. Again, salary cap 101 before you again try to paint a doomsday scenario over lost mid round draft picks.
Came here to post exactly this. And to change my vote from 'no' to 'yes.' I'm done being patient. I feel like we now have a big enough sample size to see what we have here.
