Why it isn't so bad if we let Mo play 2016 under the tag. As it stands now, we have three options with Mo: extend him, trade him, or let him play the season under the tag. Conventional wisdom holds that the third option is a bad one, and typically that's true. You don't want to overpay a player for one season only to see him walk at the end of it for nothing more than a compensatory pick. But because of a set of unusual circumstances surrounding Mo, option three may be the best choice. The case for extending Mo is fairly straightforward: we lock up our best young player. While we also have Richardson and Williams on the DL, Richardson is a head case (pun intended) and Williams isn't a sure thing yet. But the downside to extending Mo is that we'll commit a lot of money (at least as much as Fletcher Cox got from Philly if not more) to one player who could easily fail to live up to his salary. That's why some advocate trading Mo. Theoretically we should be able to get something like what the Pats got for Chandler Jones: a player and a second rounder. Of course, we aren't guaranteed that because markets change, and there's also the fact that we'd be giving up the anchor of our defense. If Richardson and Williams don't live up to expectations, we'll be in trouble. So what about keeping Mo on the tag? We'll pay him 15.7M this year, which is a reasonable salary for him and one that won't burden us long term. And guess what? We won't have to let him go; we can just tag him again, this time for 18.8M. Mo could theoretically threaten us that he won't play if we do that, but he'd be hurting his own value, and he doesn't seem like that type of person. 18.8M sounds high, but look at it this way. Tagging Mo twice would give him a 2 year, 34.5M deal with 15.7M guaranteed and no dead money after Year 1. The average salary would be 17.25M, which is almost identical to Cox's average salary. And Mo's production has been better than Cox's. Not a bad deal for us. Here's how it'll go. Mo will play 2016 under the tag. If he gets hurt or plays poorly, his value will drop and we may be able to re-sign him on the cheap. Heck, if the Coxes and Vernons of the world make their teams look foolish for spending big, Mo's value could drop even if he plays well. And if his value is still high, we'll tag him again, and then we can trade him. For picks in the 2017 draft, which is what we'd get for trading him now. Except that in addition to the compensation, we'd get a full season out of Mo for nothing more than 15.7M. And we'd know more about Richardson and Williams and how important it is that Mo remains a Jet. (And in a worst case scenario, we could have Mo play 2017 under the second tag, milk as much as we can out of his prime, and then collect the compensatory pick for losing him.) Of course, one downside of planning to use the tag twice is that teams usually need to use it on a different player the next year. But our 2012 draft class was full of busts, so we're left with just three possible candidates for the 2017 tag not named Mo: Milliner, Geno, and Winters. Something tells me Milliner or Winters won't light it up enough that we'll need to tag them. Of course, Geno could end up playing, pull a Kirk Cousins, and require us to tag him. But the odds of that are low, and frankly I'd be so thrilled he pulled it off that I wouldn't mind losing Mo as much. And remember, we'll have a month-long window after the season to re-sign players without using the tag. So Geno and Mo could play well, and we could extend Geno and then tag Mo or vice versa. Ultimately, because the price of two tags isn't that high and because we aren't losing much in free agency next year, playing Mo under the tag benefits us in the short and long term. We get to enjoy his play next year and still keep enough leverage to avoid disaster in 2017. So what do you guys think? While I'd love to sign Mo for something reasonable now or trade him for something good, letting him play under the tag doesn't bother me that much now that I've thought about it.
This has been the angle for the last 2 years. You are just realizing it and then making a thread for your revelation. haha--
The downside is it's a really good way to piss off a player. If he gets hurt or plays poorly, he probably wouldn't resign with the Jets.
You're probably right from the front office's end. But the general fan reaction (of which I was a part) has been to complain that Mo hasn't been extended or traded.
It is about the front office that has a say. Though the fans could make their noise loud and clear. But really need to settle Ryan Fitzpatrick and even Muhammad Wilkerson. First there.
Nice post and well researched Unfortunately for Mo he could have been signed for a lot cheaper than the market now BEFORE the Revis deal got done Also there are solid assets on the depth chart in Richardson and Williams so despite how good he is the FO can count on replacements He is a team player imo and tagging him wont demotivate him
When MacCagnan broke into Idzik's piggy bank and started doling out John's $160M, many on here wondered if 'some' of that dough should be used to lock up our own young talent, even if it's a year early. Oh well, water over the damn. I never understood a player's hatred of the tag. It pays him HUGE coin that he'd never seen before, and he's free to do it all over again the following season. I understand the security blanket of a long term deal, but hell these guys are in their mid 20's and if they can quadruple their already huge pay then WTF? I get it's a gamble if they lay an egg or get hurt (especially career ending) but they have insurance policies that cover all those 'what-ifs'. Correct me, but I believe the tag amount is the average of the 5 highest paid players on that position. And it's 100% guaranteed. That's far from a bad deal. Mo going from $6M (?) to almost $16M fully guaranteed to play 16 games is a pretty sweet deal. AND, he's free to do whatever he wants to next season. As far at the team/cap, Mac loses all his flexibility managing the cap. Can't back load or spread things around if it's a one year deal. That part sucks, but only sucks for Mac and his team of talented bean counters. So to answer your question, I'd personally have zero problem tagging Mo this year AND next year. We get his best 2 years of his career at some 'average' price. A lot can happen in two years, and we may be just as happy cutting him at that time in favor of an even better, younger, cheaper player. Get 'er done Mac! Pay the man! Oh....and to keep the locker room, let it leak out that Mo was demanding $22M per (or some other really crazy number) so the other men don't feel any pity for him.
Just like in hockey, I think NFL teams need an enforcer in the locker room. Then if a player is being a jack ass, holding out, misses meeting, demands too much of the pie, the enforcer shows up, grabs him by the jersey, drags him to the cold tub, then goes Enemkpali on the dude while his team mates are getting it all on their cell phones.. Problem solved. knock knock. "Who's there" "Enemkpali. I'm looking for this Mohamad guy" "OK, let him in"
This is the same crap when Macc signed A Cromartie( overkill) last season . What's the big deal they threw eight million dollars on him, as that contract didn't hurt them longterm. ( that's what a lot of Jet fans say). Well that eight million they wasted could have been rolled over , to help pay Muhammad Wilkerson some of the money owed this year. Now if you have no Intention of signing Muhammad Wilkerson longterm and it's probably going to be a down year.( schedule brutal). Why not rescind the franchise tag for Muhammad Wilkerson ( saving 15.7 million) . That you can roll over to next season, and get a player in Fa, at a position they aren't strong in. Again I would have no problem investing the money in Muhammad Wilkerson, but that isn't their thought process.( have enough quality on the Dlineman without Wilkerson). If that's the case let's do something longterm that is going to help this team eventually win a championship.
when are u people gonna wake up, I said this before and I'm saying it again, THEY DONT WANT HIM, they are looking to trade him, they like Sheldon better , the reason he hasn't been traded yet is because no one has offered a 1st round pick for him around draft time, Mac knows he needs a 1st rounder or the fan base will roast him , me personally I think a 2nd and a player or a 2nd and 3rd would have been fine , argue all u want but ur wrong , I'm right so deal with it
I don't think letting him play out the year under the franchise tag is a good idea. and its probably a REALLY bad idea. 1) Tagging him next year and saying "if he holds out he hurts his value" is kind of a giant short sighted shot in the dark no? The market will be there for him. and players holding out usually doesnt prevent them or other teams from signing them. even if it does hurt his value to hold out, i think he likely would. that would probably turn things really ugly. 2) i dont see what sense it makes to basically gaurantee him 16M this year and 18M next year on franchise tags isntead of just giving him an extension. why give him 34M gauranteed over 2 years when you can give him a longer term deal with 40-50M gauranteed, and lower the annualy salary and cap hits? to me this is probably the biggest reason against franchisng him this and next year. it doesnt really make fincancial sense. if your gonna give him a ton gauranteed, might as well make it a long term deal
Ugh I can Foresee this playing out. San Fran etc. sign mo, complain and burn the house down/who is Mo, watch film/highlights, holy shit maybe good signing, mo plays... Great signing! Some team is going to significantly upgrade their defense. Hopefully an nfc team
Then as a FO you shouldn't have tagged him in the first place and should've traded him 2 or 3 seasons ago. If letting him play under the tag was a BAD idea.
I'm good with letting him play under the tag and preserving the option to tag him again next year if need be. The window to trade him has basically closed, although I guess there's always a small chance somebody would give us something of value for him at this point. What the Jets have been trying to do with Mo for two plus years now is to get him locked up to deal similar to the one Cam Heyward signed with the Steelers and Cam Jordan with the Saints. They were probably willing to go a bit above where those guys signed but not by a lot. What they were trying to do is to lock up a cornerstone of the defense for a price that would allow them to lock up other key players as they came due over the next few seasons. It was a good attempt by Woody, Idzik, Maccagnan and everybody else involved. Nobody thought Mo was anything but a high-class player worth locking up at an affordable rate. He's the kind of guy you'd love to have in your locker room for a few years until he went post-prime. A solid contributor who makes everybody around him better. The problem is that Mo and his reps saw him as equivalent to J.J. Watt in terms of his value to the Jets and they were always looking for that type of deal. They wouldn't sign a deal before Watt did when both were trying to get something done after the third year and then they pegged mo's contract at something similar to Watt's instead of something similar to Heyward and Jordan and the other good 3-4 DE's who were locked up between Watt's deal and now. The Fins made an absolutely insane move with Suh, who may be a great player but clearly isn't worth $19M a year. Other poorly managed teams followed suit with desperate GM's like Jerry Reese and Dave Caldwell spending huge sums on players that were not at Suh's level. The Eagles, who have been on a horrific rollercoaster during the Chip Kelly era and in it's aftermath, made a very bad deal with Fletcher Cox that they are going to be regretting for years as they struggle to contain it's impact on their cap. During all of this the positions hardened between the Jets and Mo and now it is extremely unlikely they'll manage to get a deal done. He's most likely going to be signed to a huge deal next off-season by <insert the bottom-feeder-who-bites-on-him-here> and the Jets will come out the other side wondering how things degenerated as much as they did over the three seasons. This is how they degenerated: 1. The GM initially entrusted with getting Mo signed never had the full confidence of the organization. John Idzik was brought in to change the culture but not enough changes were allowed around him and so the culture just rolled forward around him. This made him a weak bargainer with the agents who had been watching the Jets over several years with the needs of their emerging young clients in mind. Nobody thought Idzik had the full backing of the organization and nobody would bend to his positions as a result. All of the good moves Idzik made were with fresh talent coming into the organization, acquiring Chris Ivory, signing Eric Decker, etc. People not focused on the Jets were happy to negotiate in good faith with Idzik but people who had been watching the organization just waited things out. 2. The parallel situations were hard to deal with, as Watt set the re-sign market and then Suh shot the moon in free agency. 3. The Jets had lots of leeway as of the time the Watt deal was done, and even when Suh signed with the Fins a year later. They had the option year plus a franchise year and theoretically another franchise year after that and so there was no urgency to make a trade early in the process when the Jets might have actually gotten something good for Mo back in return. 4. The Jets changed GM's in the middle of the process and there were other fires that needed to be put out first. One of the methods used to do that was to give Darrelle Revis everything he asked for to come back to the Jets for 2015. That was probably the last straw in terms of getting Mo signed to anything resembling a reasonable deal. Then Leonard Williams fell to the Jets on the 6 unexpectedly and any pressure the Jets felt to stabilize the defensive line went out the window. Getting Williams on the 6 was enough to give the Jets a good shot at having a very good defensive line through 2020 no matter what happened with Mo, even in the absence of Richardson if something bad happened there, which it did. All of this shouldn't reflect on Mo poorly. The guy has been playing professional football for 5 seasons now and he has never played under a contract he wanted to sign. The new CBA slotted him at the 29 pick and was not a great contract, then it's been all the Jets options since then. There is probably no player drafted under the new CBA who has been a bigger victim of it than Mo. He's the best player to be totally dictated too by the CBA, which was designed to take money out of young players pockets and put it into owner's pockets. (That's what it was designed to do obviously since the vets have been pretty screwed under the new CBA also). The Jets also don't have a lot of fault here. They're just playing the hand they were dealt to it's logical conclusion given that Mo did not want to sign an affordable deal with the Jets to stay here. There's nothing the Jets could have done but sign him to a bad deal in order to retain him. That's probably still their only option other than letting him go free agent. It sucks but on the bright side at least we have good defensive linemen after he leaves and Mo will definitely get some team trying to make a splash to give him that big deal next season. It'll be a long way out from where he wanted that first ever contract of choice but it will get done.
The Fletcher Cox deal essentially ended all possibilities of resigning Wilkerson IMO. They screwed up both the quarterback market and now the interior defensive lineman market, because while he's a very good player, I'd say Wilkerson is both better and has proved more productive as a pass rusher. Even if Richardson and Wilkerson both walk, I really don't see it as the end of the world. I'd rather they walk than even one of them gets 6 year/$100+ million deals. With the positive outlook our outside linebackers have coming into this year, Leonard Williams looks to be the future cornerstone defensive lineman of this team. Rarely will you see teams with two monsters, let alone three, at the 3-4 defensive lineman spot. I'd rather have two good outside linebackers than two good 3-4 ends. Rarely will you see a team in our situation, and while you can't knock Tannenbaum, Rex & co for drafting good players, it's was incredible overkill trying to build that massive front. The result is a lack of pressure in key third down situations without a blitz. While we produced solid sack numbers and good pressure, there were times at crucial moments of games when the front four disappeared, possibly due to the fact that they're all 300+ pounds, and operate without much of an edge rushing game. It clogs shit up when your offensive lineman knows that they are going to basically have to block everyone inside, with no pressure coming on the edge. A lot of Wilkerson's future situation with this team might be weighed on the development of Mauldin and Jenkins as NFL players. If Mauldin can put up 7+ sacks with solid pressure and stay away from the injury bug, I'll be comfortable letting Wilkerson walk, or tagging him again and trading him for even a second or third round pick. If Mauldin/Jenkins are unable to produce pressure, we may have to look at giving him a big deal. That'll make me even more wary as he gets a year older, and a year closer to leaving his prime. It's a shame, but it is what it is at this point. I wish we could've found a trading partner. Life as a Jets fan, leaving virtually no market for him with the huge defensive lineman deals being handed out (Jackson, Vernon, Cox, etc.) along with one of the deepest defensive lineman draft in recent history. Tagging him again also allows us to suck the possible best years of his career out of him in back to back years and simply letting him go when he's about to start to decline. It's going to get ugly with a possible holdout next year, but the new CBA (to my knowledge) fines players even more for holding out. Not to mention holdouts rarely work in a players favor and usually mark a downturn for their career. The Eagles are also playing a dangerous game with how they structured Cox' contract. The highest paying years of the deal are at the end of the contract. Obviously that's because that's when they foresee themselves having the cap space to absorb the hit. If he gets hurt, he's virtually uncuttable until after 2019 without still absorbing a large dead cap hit. Pretty bizarre for a deal to be so backloaded. It reminds me a lot of what Tannenbaum did when we made our big push for a Superbowl title. Look what happened. The team imploded into cap hell and strapped us for 2+ years, leaving us with a bare cupboard and 2+ seasons needed to work our cap situation back to a favorable state. Philadelphia is a boom or bust franchise, which is going to be in a potentially real shitty spot by the time Wentz is ready to take a leap as a top tier quarterback. We'll see how they fare. http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/philadelphia-eagles/fletcher-cox/
none of this ever bothered me.. in fact it's why i knew he wouldn't be traded and won't be extended until we either reach a fair deal or find a really good trade partner and this offseason we couldn't do that. Tag em up again next year, Sheldon and Williams still on rookie deals.
I think he's going to be traded as soon as he signs the franchise tender. The Jets do not need three top defensive ends - Richardson & Williams are enough and I don't want them to put Richardson back at LB to try to get him on the field. They can't trade Mo until he signs the tender. I suspect the Jets already have a deal worked out for him. I don't see any scenario where they extend him, barring a career ending injury to Richardson or Williams. I also don't see them franchising him again next year for $19 million.
1. Mo might hold out through part of TC, but I doubt he would hold out in actual games. First of all, if he does, he doesn't get paid and it doesn't go against our cap. Also, he's coming off a broken leg, which means he'll have two strikes against him if he doesn't play. That's because he needs to prove to other teams that he's back to normal, which he can't do if he sits. And finally, Bowles can tell him that if he holds out, even through TC, he'll drop below Richardson and Williams on the depth chart. If that happens, his production this season when he finally plays will drop and his market value will drop with it. 2. Mo isn't likely to accept any deal that doesn't pay him at least 17M per year with 60M+ guaranteed, considering that's what Fletcher Cox just got from the Eagles. So we can't lower the annual cap hits with a long term deal unless we backload the deal, which would give us 20+M cap hits in future years.
