Well, they did sign a wide receiver. They signed Chad Johnson, who committed career suicide. It's rather difficult to see him as a success or failure given the externalities of the situation- Jeff Ireland shouldn't have reasonably expected Johnson to beat his wife. You can name names, though. Should the Dolphins have signed say, Vincent Jackson? Based on three games in, no, they shouldn't have. It isn't worth that kind of money who is not dramatically out-producing either Brian Hartline or Davone Bess, and doing so in such a wildly inefficiency manner(Catching 43% of the passes thrown to him). http://www.footballsfuture.com/2012/fa/dl.html Here's a list of potential free agent acquisitions you, or anyone else can go through. I'm genuinely curious how many legitimate paths not taken we can come out with.
I dunno anyone of the wr's that got payed would be better than anything we have atm that's my main beef with our fa signings we didn't go after a big money wr.
I'm actually interested in this one, and another set of eyes bent on looking for worst case scenarios might unearth some sort of truth, if even incidentally.
The Patriots signed Andre Carter, Mark Anderson and Brian Waters to relatively cheap contracts last year and got a lot of mileage out of them.
You make Ireland look worse by bringing up Chad Johnson. The guy that couldn't produce in New England was gonna be productive here?
Well, it's not an insignificant question to ask. I mean, just running down the list of the potential guys: http://www.footballsfuture.com/2012/fa/wr.html Vincent Jackson- No, we shouldn't have based on his performance so far. Reggie Wayne- Didn't have a chance, resigned day 1 of Free Agency w/original team. Marques Colston- Didn't have a chance, resigned day 1 of Free Agency w/original team. Brandon Lloyd- Maybe? He's producing pretty well in New England, but that's a pretty big caveat given his past performance irregularities. Robert Mecheam, Braylon Edwards, Laurent Robinson, and Mario Manningham fall into a grey area. They've all had starting roles but lesser production than our starters, are they more cost effective, productive, etc. than saying **** it?
I wanted Reggie Wayne pretty bad for a nice vet to help our qb I'm not sure how much money It would of cost to make him leave Indy though.
But that perception isn't really reality. New England could afford to bury him or not put him on the field given the circumstances, and I think it's pretty unlikely he has "nothing" left. They are just as, or even more likely to have not played Chad Johnson because he was going to be "alright" rather than just terrible.
It's something, which is a little bit more than the sweet **** all that's been going around otherwise. Given the fact most big money free agent acquisitions bust, it's almost certainly more accurate to suggest someone will be a bust off of three games than it is to go off of their reputation and past accomplishments.
I don't believe so. So basically we're starting a thread to blame Jeff Ireland because of a 33-year old guard signed as insurance lied about a pre-existing neck injury, re-injured it, and was cut with cause off of Injured Reserve? Meanwhile the guy he was signed as insurance for has played pretty well? That's not the silliest, but it's close.
No, that's how you perceived the thread. I pointed out that with Hicks being cut, that 7 of the 9 free agents signed this past offseason were now gone, and 1 of those 2 were Legedu Naanee. That's what happens when someone criticizes Ireland though, people rush to point out that this one thing in a vaccum isn't that bad, which is fine, except when it's said NUMEROUS times over an extended period, you have a problem.
I don't get this. Why was he only going to New England? Were they offering him the most money of any team? Would he or did he turn down bigger offers?
I don't think that's true at all in the NFL, and it's in part my point. You very rarely under any circumstances get what you pay for. Even successes in the context of free agency will frequently have a premium which makes it difficult for money to be "efficiently" spent. It's very common for teams to get awful returns on expensive players and good returns on cheap players. In fact I wouldn't be terribly surprised if you went through and quantified success and matched it with dollars spent on free agents, there wouldn't be all that strong a correlation between expenditure and performance. Then there's the potential for case-by-case arguments for suggesting these items are bad.
The only person to make notable contribution this year in free agency, Marshall, is now injured. The invisible man is the only signing left that will be active. Point of the thread is: free agency acquisitions this year sucked. I would have hopped to go after manningham or garcon...just two of the guys that interested me.
This is as far from the bottom line as it could get. Teams regularly receive substantially less production than they pay for in free agency.
Yeah, but right now you can argue that Mario Manningham and Pierre Garcon would have improved our wide receiver talent/depth, but I think it's difficult to argue they would be worth the money. It's early, but I'd be absolutely shocked if Pierre Garcon is ever worth the money the Redskins paid for him.
It's impossible to not overspend on a coveted free agent in the NFL though. As to your second point, it may very well be true. My guess is this would correlate to success in the draft. Unfortunately, the Dolphins haven't drafted extremely well over the last God knows how many years.
I could've worded that better. In the context of the Miami Dolphins this past offseason, they spent very little and are receiving very little in production as a result.
It makes sense. I guess the market for him probably wasn't such that he had to turn down a huge offer from someone else.
Correct. But I would think over the spectrum of possible free agency outcomes, that would fall much closer to "negligible" or "non-eventful" than "bad" or "worst ever".
Everyone pretty much knew it. And if he went elsewhere, there was probably a good chance the team wouldn't get their money's worth and he would be a problem.
Well, if you take into consideration the Philbin philosophy, adding via FA wasn't a priority, at least not this year...On the good side, they spent very little and the ones they spent on have been good for us, including our re-signs... I just don't see that they had much to choose from due to lack of cap room and what was really out there...And no, I never for a moment thought they would be signing Manning...
How is it bad to receive no production when spending no money? If that is bad, then what does spending a lot of money for no production constitute?????
How does a team coming off 7-9, 7-9, 6-10 justify not spending any money? If you say it's because of the cap, who's responsible for the cap? You see where I'm going with this...
Yes, but you should be able to come up with some sort of plan for what Ireland should have done besides a nebulous "spend more money". Who should Ireland have signed? I'm not saying there wasn't anyone, but if there was some sort of failure it shouldn't be hard to point out what should be beneficial, reasonably cost-effective decisions given the state of the roster.
The team's record is not a factor. Money spent in free agency is generally money down the toilet. It inherently provides very little value added.
He should have made the WR position his top priority this past offseason. Draft, trade, free agency, whatever. Get SOMEONE. He had multiple options. Whatever restrictions he may have had salary wise were of his own doing.
