saw somewhere that the patriots could be after mario. could the texans use him to deal for wes welker?
I mean as of right now we don't have rights over Mario right? So if the Patriots wanted him and willing to pay, they can have him and we don't get anything.
Unless you'll be paid more per year than what even top tier FA make guaranteed in a multi-year big deal. Believe me, if Mario gets the tag, he'd simply take the insane amount of money guaranteed, and resume to being the top FA on the market next year.
More interesting than Mario not get tagged is that several WRs aren't getting tagged either. The Texans HAVE to sign one of them if they don't resign Mario.
The nfl players are stupid to have kept it. In a league where one hit and you are gone you need that long term money. Plus they have it so instead of getting the average of top 5 money you get an average of top 5 of the last five years which is sure to lower the top amount.
If your talking about trying to sign a Vincent Jackson or Colston or even a Mike Wallace, the upper tier free agents, I don't agree. We still have Chris Myers to lock up and then Briesel and Dressen in that order if they choose to bring them back but more importantly we are going to be in the exact situation next offseason with Duane Brown, Barwin, and Schaub becoming free agents. We can't hamstring ourselves like we probably will be doing if we re-sign Mario by signing a free agent WR to a monster contract. Garcon might be asking for too much money in comparison to what he is. Someone like Robert Meachem might fit the bill and I think Reggie Wayne will be looking more towards a winning chance than for money even though I have the feeling he's going to sign with the Pats if he doesn't follow Manning to wherever he goes.
Here's how the Steelers are doing it: Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me Call it the Month of Living Dangerously for the Pittsburgh Steelers. A month ago, on Super Bowl Sunday, they were $25 million over the projected 2012 salary cap. This morning, they are approximately $12 million under. How they got there: They shaved $25.86 million by restructuring contracts of five veterans -- Ben Roethlisberger ($8.03m savings), LaMarr Woodley ($6.56m), Lawrence Timmons ($5.14m), Ike Taylor ($3.28m) and Willie Colon ($2.85m). The Steelers then saved $14.26 million by cutting five players -- Hines Ward ($3.39m), James Farrior ($2.83m), Bryant McFadden ($2.50m), Chris Kemoeatu ($2.39m) and Aaron Smith ($2.11m). Total cap savings in one month: $40.12 million. But you say, If the Steelers were $25 million over the cap and they cut $40 million, why are they only $12 million under and not $15 million under? Do the math, King! Because to replace the five players that were cut, the Steelers have to put five players in their place. The cap is based on the top 51-salaried players on your roster. So let's assume that the five new players on the cap --and I'm being generous here -- have second-year NFL minimum salaries of $540,000. (Some probably would have first-year numbers.) Those five players, combined, would make about $2.7 million total, meaning that you'd subtract that number from the cap savings of $40 million and come up with a number close to $37 million. That means they're about $12 million to the good, assuming there are no more re-signings or restructurings. That doesn't mean the Steelers will be able to sign a lot of players, or any players, to improve their team. It does means the Steelers will have the money to sign their restricted and unrestricted free agents to the tender numbers they'll need to use. For instance, the first-round receiver tender on invaluable restricted free agent Mike Wallace is $2.75 million, meaning if a team signs him to a contract, the Steelers have the right to match the offer, and if they don't, the signing team would forfeit its first-round pick to Pittsburgh. Could it happen? Theoretically yes. If the 49ers signed Wallace to a front-loaded five-year, $40 million contract, and the Steelers didn't match, the Steelers would either agree to pay Wallace an onerous contract that would force more cap restructuring, or get the Niners' first-round pick in this year's draft, the 30th overall. In other words, the Steeler worries aren't over. Wallace is a 25-year-old speed demon with good hands who runs good routes and has been productive, averaging 57 catches and 18.7 yards per catch in his first three years as a Steeler. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/peter_king/03/05/offseason/2.html
So Lance Z was just saying that he looked into it some more and talked to more people, and it's virtually impossible to sign Myers, Brisiel, and Dreessen. And that doesn't even start to think about Mario. Basically we are over the cap now -- I think he said by about $8 million. A few other tidbits (not verbatim): DeMeco -- we would only save $900k by outright cutting him because it would allocate all of his signing bonus as a cap hit this year. They could restructure him to save some but nowhere near the full contract as we thought they would if they cut him outright. Owen Daniels -- wasn't likely to be cut but no real savings with cutting him either because he was just restructured last year. Jacoby -- goner. $$$ in our pocket. (probably Leinart too) Myers -- going to take a little magic to make it happen, and we'll likely lose Brisiel and Dreessen in the process. Brisiel has never had a big contract before so hard for him to pass up if a team like Washington comes calling, where he knows the scheme. So unless we get some serious hometown discounts, we'll be lucky to walk away with one of Mario, Myers, or Brisiel+Dreessen.
1. The NFL salary cap goes up a bit every year. 2. The Texans have always been able to draft linebackers, but never receivers except the one time they had the #1 overall pick. 3. You should take a look at Mario's cap number to understand just how much money the Texans save by not retaining him. 4. Receivers make relatively little money compared to most other positions. 5. Who cares if the Texans screw themselves capwise 2-3 years down the road if they can win now? I would much prefer12-4 type contending seasons mixed in with 6-10 crappers, than consecutive 9-7/10-6 above average teams.
I don't understand how that can be the case when they were just under the cap last year and that included Mario's $18 cap number, who is not on the books anymore..nor is Myers or Dreessen
Yeah, it seems like he is taking the report that the first year pays $18 mil to Arian as the cap hit. If that were the case then that plus the escalation of some of the other contracts probably would add up to $8 million over the cap, but I don't think Arian's first year will count $18 million against the cap. I think Lance got some bad info.
No, he stated that Arian's cap hit was only $8 million this year. He had that right. I don't remember exactly how far he said we were over (was driving and he was tossing around a lot of numbers) but it was substantial. You also have to remember that with all the restructuring last year, we probably have a lot of salaries that escalated (or the cap hits escalated) this year, which would inflate our cap figure.
Talk has been the salary cap will go up around 4 million this year. You need around 5 million to sign your draft picks which occur every year. Salaries typically escalate each year, the cap goes up but typically so does your total in salaries. People aren't understanding that if we don't sign Mario we don't magically have 18 million in cap room. We aren't saving money because we don't have that money to begin with that's where the whole issue of signing him/not signing him is coming from. We have to restructure deals (Pat Kirian believes we can get 12-14 million freed up) and possibly cut people while having Mario agree to a cap friendly deal just to create the funds for us to retain him. Some of those resources just got taken away by Arian's deal. Just look at Diehard Rocket's post above, Lance Zierlien believes we are right now OVER the cap. Maybe that might not be accurate, but its safe to say we are right up against it. And the Rick Smith/Gark Kubiak regime has only spent 1 premier draft pick on a WR and that was a 3rd rounder on Jacoby Jones. The other WR's they have drafted were late round projects or specialists (Dorin Dickerson, Trindon Holliday). So you can't really say this team doesn't draft receivers well because they haven't really made an attempt. Stevie Johnson, a tier 2 type number 1 receiver just got this contract... If you want to get Vincent Jackson, Marques Colston, or try to pry Mike Wallace (who you would have to pay more to avoid the Steelers of matching) you are going to have to pay more than what Johnson got. If we sign Myers and one of these guys we'll definitely be over the cap, and we still have to get creative to come up with the funds. This isn't 2-3 years down the road this is NEXT offseason. Duane Brown, Barwin, Schaub all free agents. Duane Brown is about to get paid big time and Barwin will be making a substantial raise. If you go into that offseason in the same position we are in now, we potentially stand to lose 2 of those guys. We were 10-6 but way above average with a healthy Matt Schaub, we are potential players in the Super Bowl. You go all-in when your older. We have one of the youngest starting defenses in the NFL. I would rather keep this team together because we have are young and have the foundation in place to be serious contenders for several years.
Next year is the year where the cap explodes. Charlie Palilo has used a number of like $40 million (which doesn't seem right) but I think it might be $20 million or so in an increase. This is the year where you have to get through the relatively small cap increase. If they can get through this year, then the year after they'll have no problem.
If signing Myers is likely to cost us Brisiel and Dreessen, there's no way we're keeping Mario. We don't know how they constructed the FA deals or the restructured ones.
I thought I heard Pallillo say that the cap increase wouldn't take effect until the 2014 season, for some reason. Maybe I heard wrong.
