I think it was a misnomer that we were in salary cap hell. Sure it was not ideal but Tanny was always able to find ways to get money when we needed it. I think the cap was managed pretty well by him. Sure there were some bad contracts to holmes and sanchez but it was a once year thing with a pretty easy recovery.
Until Idzik put a big time #1 WR and a good #2 in this offense the jury will still be out. With all that cap space he has no excuse not to. This team should be able to score with the best of them and shot down the best of them. The D is good, there is no need to waste top draft picks on it next year.
1. Free agency is not the evil shit everyone here thinks it is. No. It isn't. Jets should grab good free agents each off season. Good free agent means good free agents - not these block-buster deals that marked Tannenbaum era. Jets should always look to fill the depth with mid-range free agents at good price. 2. This team has done very well so far if you ask me. I don't know if Geno is doing good enough of a job, but that aside, this team has done very well - both in terms of draft and free agency. Jets should keep on working this way. The next three drafts are all very important - but then I am confident they will come out just fine. [Just look at how they stayed put all along and scooped up good prospects rounds after rounds.]
Cap hell happens when you hand out big contracts and get nothing in return (especially when there is dead money required to end those contracts. Here is what we had last year: 1. Sanchez had been given a huge extension and stunk up the joint. Even as a June 1st cut he would have hurt us badly. 2. Harris stunk up the joint and counted $10 mil against the cap this year. His cap hit drops to $7 mil next year but guaranteed money was involved so he could not be cut. 3. Santonio Holmes got injured (out for the year), was a locker room distraction, after a huge extension was the only thing he received. 4. Mevis was the highest paid cornerback, could not be franchised, had the ability to get out of his contract leaving us with nothing and only wanted more $$$. Then he got hurt and gave us nothing on the field. 5-7. Cromartie, Brick, and Mangold the core of our team each had just been given huge multiyear extensions. 8. Bart Scott had a big contract, cost us dead money to cut, and was as slow as hell. 9. Calvin Pace had a big contract, cost us dead money to cut, and had an off year. 10. Landry was dirt cheap but wanted big money to stay. He left for the $$$ leaving us with a hole at safety. 11. Brandon Moore had lost a step and cost us about $5 mil. We got the butt fumble in return. 12. Our other starting guard was in the last year of his contract, had a bad year, and left us with a hole at the position. 13. We collapsed down the stretch and seemed to have many unfilled needs that we could not afford to fix. I would say that last year's cap hell was all to real. We were lucky that a bunch of young players thrown into starting jobs stepped up big time to make this team dangerous (every other weak at least).
The emergence of this just game me a hard on. Great work, great tool for fans. Combine this with the coaches film now available and it really is possible to become an armchair GM. My girlfriend is about to so pissed... probably going to spend the next week playing with this.
If you pull our cap numbers from the top menu you can see your cap info for this year (2013). We are using $23,228,484 for dead money this year with Sanchez and Holmes still on the books as current players. For anyone who thinks we were not in cap hell last year / this year you have to be kidding yourself.
Cool idea. May I make a suggestion, since you already have the data... maybe give some "suggested" numbers for extensions. "League Avg, Top-5 Avg, Highest Paid at Position, Lower Quartile", etc. It would make using the feature more robust and easier for average Joes like me.
+1000...there's no way to spread out the salary past 1 year so I just gave Wilkerson 8 Mil next year assuming it will balloon to 12-14 in 2015-16 but yeah guidelines would make this way more functional looking 2+ years ahead.
We have a lot of players playing very well on relatively small contracts, I said around week 1 how impressed I was with his handling of everything so far and that has only increased. Normally you can't really rate a draft class this early, yet the fact that some of the players are excelling while others look like more traditional players, developing through their rookie year, make it look very good so far. First Move: Fire Sparano, cut Pace, Smith & Smith, Scott, Pouha. All obvious moves, as previously stated. Second Move: Hire Mornhinweg. Great choice, taking a proven OC who will be able to take charge of the offense and allow Rex to focus on Defense. Rex is among the top 3 Defensive coaches in the league. Tell me what team that has a defensive minded HC with a better OC than MM? BB doesn't count because that Offense is Brady's baby. Third Move: Step out of any talks with FA's who were out of our price range. Don't forget we were pretty restricted in terms of how much $ we could spend, but patience in the face of intense media scrutiny is no small feat. He filled each positional need with a player who did not necessarily have a complete skill set (RB Mike Goodson, OLB Antwan Barnes, DT Antonio Garay, OLB Calvin Pace, S Dawan Landry, OG Willie Colon, TE Kellen Winslow) but can all do something well and could be utilized in different ways in conjunction with different players. Most importantly, all were very reasonably priced. Fourth Move: Trade Darrelle Revis. We all knew as Jets fans that he had 2 options with Revis: Extend him that offseason or trade him for what value we could get. Revis wouldn't budge on his 16 mil, and doing that would have literally left us without even the low budget FA's I just listed, leaving us to draft need, not BPA which I will discuss next. The rest of the team would have been basically filled out by UDFA's. When you look back it's actually silly how much controversy there was over this, Revis' contract demands forced our hand. Fifth Move: Draft BPA the first two days. Dee Milliner was regarded by 99.9% of draft analysts as a top 5 pick, and best CB available. Sheldon Richardson may not have been universally recognized as worth a top 16 pick, but Idzik, Ryan, and their scouts recognized him as such and took him despite relative depth at D-Line. Geno Smith was by far BPA where we picked in the 2nd round, considering he has the tools to become a franchise QB. Brian Winters has played how much worse than early picks like Warmack? Exactly. BPA stocked our team with players who didn't fill "need" as it was traditionally viewed, but their addition allowed them to compete, and ultimately win starting jobs from the starters who likely would have dragged the team down. I'll mention the 4th round since I think we can all agree the trade for Ivory provided us with more upside than most players available in the 4th round. I am not well versed enough with all of the remaining players in rounds 5-7 to make any claims about them, although Bohanon has been a nice starter scooped from the 7th. The only other true "Move" since then has been grabbing Ed Reed, and the result of that remains to be seen. The rest of this season can be directly credited to our coaches and players, so let make the playoffs and make the "experts" eat that shit they constantly spew.
I would still spend money on an experienced #1 skill player for this team whether it is a WR, TE, or RB does not matter. Cutting Holmes pays for this move which is a necessity for us to compete. Jimmy Graham in a Jets uniform would help our offense convert many third downs.
^And how do you figure the Saints let Jimmy Graham even sniff free agency without at least tagging him and getting MAJOR compensation? Gotta take care of our own before we go out and buy other players. I'd like to actually keep Mo-Wilk for a long time.
We need to lock up the core 3 big dlinemen, and we have to toss away dead weight. Starts with Sanchez, Holmes, etc..
we can't lock up Boss Hog till after his 3rd year (2015) if my memory is right. no negations for rookie contracts till that point. snacks I don't know... but Wilk will be getting extended thats for sure. Maybe Kerley too?
I think that defensively Orakpo or Ward would be a huge addition, and we should be targeting a bunch of TE/WRs on offensive i.e. Decker, Pitta, Nicks, Maclin, Tate, Finley or Asamoah at G. Idzik should absolutely pick up at least one of these guys if not 2. After extending Mo, Howard, Walls, and whichever TE plays better down the stretch out of Cumberland/Winslow we should have at least 13 Mil after filling out the roster with rookies and cheap FA's. That leaves some cushion to restructure with a couple of the bigger contracts and freedom in 2015 to get rid of Cromartie once Walls and Milliner are developed. Probably do nothing with Harrison's contract and get another cheap year out of him before tagging him or giving a big contract in 2015.
