Dude we don't need to pay Leonard Williams for like 4 more years, Sheldon in about 3 years. These 2 players do not play a role in the Wilkerson negotiations. Snacks is gone. I truly believe Mac will sign Mo and the team will not be cap hampered by his contract. Brick will take a pay cut to remain with the team. Brick is still an average lineman in a league where there's very few good lineman. He will remain with the Jets under a lesser cap figure. Jets need an edge rusher still, and you won't find one in FA, you will find one in the draft, so this won't be an expensive acquisition. Jets also need a linebacker and I believe we can steal one of Denvers inside linebackers. They are cover linebackers and shouldn't break the bank. Or they can go via the draft. I think you believe the Jets are looking to make a big splash in Free Agency, but that was last offseason. Time to retain homegrown elite talent. That's what winning franchises do. This is a passing league, all the more reason to let Snacks go. Wilk is our best interior pass rusher, you don't let players like that go. Sheldon has to prove himself and so does Leonard Williams. BTW Sheldon down the road will want more than Wilkerson and I'm not down with giving Sheldon 100m as he's done some moronic things in his career so far. Eventually you'll need to pay one of them. Said it before you are simply delaying the inevitable.
101 brings up some great points of how Sheldon and Leonard will not sway the decision in Mo's contract. You have to try and retain him and I think he is totally worth it. Snacks is a 2 down lineman and I just don't think you hand out big bucks to a player that will be subbed out of passing downs in the league the way it's constructed
I'm fully aware that it will be a few more years before Williams gets a big contract and Richardson will get his pay day in 2 or 3 years. Still, the issue remains that at that time, when the Jets should be a legit contender, they don't want to have to deal with having to cut one of them or lose other team members so that all three of them can get paid. GMs have to think long term down the road. They don't have the luxury of thinking like fans, which you are obviously doing. They most certainly will play a role in Wilkerson negotiations, not only will Mac know that those two will be watching and seeing what Mo gets, but he also has to think of overall team salary cap structure. Even with Williams and Richardson on relatively cheap rookie contracts, by the time one adds in their cap hits, Mo's, the NT's cap hit (whoever that may be if it is another player other than one of those 3), and DL depth, that may be a greater percentage of the team cap than Mac is willing to put into the DL. That's just one piece of Mo's cap hit. You seem oblivious to the fact that the Jets have 24 FAs this off season. They have holes at numerous positions that need to be addressed. With what they would have to pay Mo, they could not only sign some of their own FAs that they want to retain, but also bring in 2-3 quality outside FAs to upgrade those positions, and that could make the team significantly better than just having Mo back alone. You can't just say that Brick will take a pay cut. You don't know that. He may, but until he does, he has to be counted at his full salary. He has the Jets over a barrel. They have no one to replace him with so they can't cut him if he refuses to take a pay cut. I never said that the Jets could find the answer at OLB in FA, nor have I even remotely intimated that they were going to make a big splash in FA. That's utter nonsense. You obviously haven't read any of my numerous posts on the topic of Mo. I have said quite the opposite. You're the one with the totally unrealistic view of the situation thinking it will be no problem to re-sign Mo, our own FAs that we want to keep, sign the draft picks and still have money to sign outside FAs. That's not your normal standard.
I ask you this, how many of those 24 FAs are worth a damn? Maybe 7 at most? Wilkerson, Fitzpatrick, Powell, Henderson, Douzable, Allen, Jarrett, and Lattimore . The majority of these free agents can be replaced by younger, cheaper players. The last 5 I mentioned won't have an issue being resigned and won't put a large dent in the cap. Understanding the GM must look a little down the road, but it should not be the end all decision-maker in terms of who stays and who goes. We aren't paying a QB 100M dollars. 2 years down the road a lot of these large contracts won't be as large. You look at Brick, Mangold, Harris, Marshall - a lot of the contracts won't be the same so I don't see how we are restricted from resigning Mo as long as the money is right. You can front-load the contracts prior to Leonard Williams being a FA, there are plenty of options here. I still don't think Mo is commanding 16M+ a year like everyone else is saying. If so, we can trade him away but until that's an actual reality the Jets should do everything they can to resign him. Just remember, we won't get equal value. Mo and Fitz will come before the numerous positions that need to be addressed. They are the players that for the most part helped us get to 10 wins last year. I also think Brick is more than likely to take a pay-cut then Mo commanding some outlandish amount of money. There are creative ways of decreasing the cap for Brick [converting salary to bonuses and such], I am no cap guru but you get the picture. Steelers and Patriots have been doing this for years now. I mentioned earlier also, the Jets could be around 30M+ under the cap. That's enough room to keep Mo, Fitz and Powell. Should be room to sign 2 or 3 FAs as well as the draft.
You're under-rating Damon Harrison. I don't know that the Jets can find another NT in a 3-4 as good as he's been at run-stopping.
That's an impossibility because Snacks is the best run stopper NT in the league. I'm not sure if that means he deserves north of $5 or $6 million, though.
He's being overrated on this board right now, this is a passing league. Tom Brady dropped back 50 times against us and won earlier in the season. They didn't even bother running the football. I like Snacks, but if the reports are true and he turned down a contract extension worth 5M / season, he's gone, and the Jets shouldn't waste anymore time negotiating. He's a 2 down lineman, that has 0 impact on the passing game. He can be replaced.
He's worth $6M. He has to be worth $6M given the Jets have been a top 3 run defense over the time he has been the starting NT. Only Denver and Seattle have been consistently in the same class stopping the run and they've both been up in games more often, forcing the opponent to pass to catch up. The Jet's opponents have wanted to run the ball and been unable too.
Denver had to let Terrance Knighton go and he was one of the best run stoppers in the league. These things happen. Seattle has done the same, Jacksonville has been taking players to incorporate Gus Bradley's defense for a while now. Bruce Irvin maybe on his way to Atlanta.
Knighton is 2 years older than Snacks. He wasn't a Bronco originally, signing with them as a free agent on his second contract. They've been used differently and so you have Snacks with 183 tackles but only 1.5 sacks in 3 seasons, whereas Knighton has 230 tackles but 14 sacks in 7 seasons. Nobody is going to clog the middle like Snacks has for the Jets in the run game. He's taking on double-teams and getting his hands on the ball-carriers 61 times a season. It's easy to look at him and say he doesn't get penetration but the other teams never gets to the second level in the middle against the Jets. Most teams don't even try.
The point is that these teams were able to move on and still field a very good defense. Their respective roles first and foremost was to stop the run. They may have been used differently, but at the end of the day the Broncos weren't going to put all of their money on a run stopping NT that wasn't good at rushing the passer. We were fine with Sione Pouha before. I think we will do OK without Snacks too, it might not be the best run defense of all time, but I don't think it'll be a point where we are giving up 100+ more rushing yards a game. There are ways of working around this. 7M+ a year for a 2 down lineman is too much.
A lot of folks think NTs are interchangeable. The just do not make as much as sack artists. But the jet run D was formidable. It took away a large part of the opponents' offense this year. Harrison does this a lot better than any replacement they could find.
Without Harrison in the middle our complete lack of a pass rush will be exposed far worse than when teams were unable to think about running up the middle at all.
Jets are supposedly high on Deon Simon. If so, Snacks is very likely a goner, especially since he turned down 5 mil a year.
It was 3rd round and really the only negotiation was going to be where he signed. All UDFA get the same 3 year, minimum salary contract and a minimal signing bonus.
That remains to be seen regarding Simon being a guy advancing into the rotation. Snacks was great this year. He really was. I think he showed a little versatility also. If they could get something close to what Mo would get I bet they would rather trade Richardson. But that's not likely. Tough choices and work ahead
