Time to extend Starks and Jones then?

 

Indeed

 

I'll say it again, Dawn Aponte deserves the finest of moustache rides.

 

Well, I'd love to see Jones extended, but do keep in mind the spending this offseason has to be offset by saving more then normal amounts of this year's cap.

Do think they are doing a good job with it, far better then Shula/JJ/Wanny ever did imo.

 

$3.7M this year.

http://overthecap.com/nfl-rookie-salary-cap.php

 

I feel like most teams manage the cap pretty well these days though, no? As the salary cap enters whatever year it is in now, 20 or so, teams seem to know how to structure deals, how to move money around, etc.

That being said, I DO like where we are at. But I assume when you are an extremely young team, you should be well below the cap.

 

The questions are will the contract of Wallace interfere with the balance structure of the team in a couple of years once we have to sign Tannehill, and do we have a false sense of cap security considering the amount of impending free agents, just need to see who will play well before we can even go there.

 

Sort of, save for the Jest, who drafted poorly and spent lavishly on FA's few teams are in cap purgatory any more, what does happen is you just can't afford to keep everyone.

Wallace, Clabo, Grimes, would be on their old teams save for the Cap, suspect we see the same thing next year with our team if they are successful, lots of FA's decent cap but not the amount we had this year.

 

I agree that we need to go into next offseason with as much cap space as we can, but extending Jones now can only be a good thing. Lock up our youngest good potential UFA now, and give ourselves more time and leverage to work on the rest of them next year. I'd like to see Starks redone too, but only at a price thats fair to the team. If the deal doesn't get done now that we freed up that space, I have to guess that he's asking for more in 2014 and beyond than the team is comfotable giving him. I have a feeling that we'll keep one, at most, of the two veteran DTs.

 

Lock up Jones while you can get him cheaper. His price only goes up if he plays even better this season.

Starks I do not think is in our long term plans.

 

Much to the media's chargin.

 

And next season when Wallace's cap hit rises by $14 million over this season
and Ellerbe's cap hit rises by $5 million,Wheelers cap hit rises by $4 million,
Hartline's cap hit rises by $4.1 million,
4 players with an increase cap hit of $27+ million over this season will have people calling for Aponte's head.

Add to that all the free agent starters we will have to sign or lose
including Incognito,Jones,Keller,Clemons,Grimes,Jerry,Jones,Carroll,Misi
Soliai,Starks, as well as a bunch more secondary players.

Should be interesting to see how they manage all this

 

Well, more than likely:

-Incognito I think Thomas is his replacement
-Starks Not sure, maybe Vaughn Martin surprises

Are leaving, imo, that is 13 million off of the books, and there should be far less dead cap money as well, so I do think it is manageable.

Real problem will be Soliai and Jones will be FA's as well.

 

even with all this we are like 20 million under right now and there is patterson with a 5.3 million cap savings next year

 

Patterson, Starks and Incognito = close to 17 million, plus 13 million rollover dollars. I think we'll be OK. I just think it's funny how the media narrative is that Ireland spent buku bucks to save his ***.

 

I fully expect we will be double dipping at DT next draft depending on what happens with Odrick. Soliai they might try to keep if they can get him at the current contract (ie: take the discount again). While Jones contract will be big.....he's still a safety so I am figuring Hartline money there.

Soliai, Incognito won't be back and if the market plays out like it did this year I could see Ireland. There might be an extension out there for Grimes/Keller depending on how they play this year and who will play ball contract wise.

My guess is by next year that Patterson and Marshall will both be gone (I expect one to stick this year by cutting their salary down and playing for incentives). However, we will have dead money on the books for Dansby/Burnett for being June 1st cuts.

Yes the cap # is a bit high right now for next year...but again there's a lot of funny money in there to play with. This age of the NFL is all about keeping your core guys and rotating out your good but not core guys to stay out of cap hell.

 

On the other hand, if I'm Reshad Jones, I'm not convinced re-signing now is the right thing to do. Assuming he has another decent year, he'd command close to elite S money on the open market next off-season. It's not as simple as us just wanting to go ahead and pay him now as it is what are his options...

I just don't think it's as simple as the Fins wanting to sign him now as it is whether he wants to sign right now....

As to the other guys, losing both Starks and Soliai would be tough for this D...However, I don't think that Starks at his age, is worth to us, what he'll demand on the open market... The big guy (Soliai) might be easier to extend, but that still remains to be seen. It'll depend who is on the radar once FA circa 2014 is here to think about...

 

The better teams in the NFL use a lot of cap space to sign their legitimate franchise QB's to huge contracts. The Dolphins pay their QB's very little money in comparison and that is why they have been able to have this extra cap space. If Tannehill does become a top tier QB as some people think he will. The Dolphins will be paying him a heck of a lot more money in a few years and that will take care of all that extra cap space.

It is fairly easy to manage your cap space when you aren't having to pay your QB a lot of money and you are coming off four straight losing seasons. Having a lot of cap space usually means that your team hasn't been very good in recent years and you have decided to go with younger, less expensive players, while letting your older and more experienced veterans go in free agency or cutting them.
This is the case with the Dolphins.

It will be interesting to see how they handle the salary cap if they actually become a winning organization over the next few years.

 

They're likely to end up with a bit more cap space than this. They've got significant cap space invested in guys whom are potential releases, who are in the last year of their deal and have replacements on the roster.

 

My first two names would be Dimitri Patterson and Dan Carpenter. I guess you could make a case for Richard Marshall if his back is a lingering issue, though it doesn't appear to be at this point.

Richie Incognito...I'd struggle to cut him. For now.

 

Depends. You see guys signing deals with a year to go all the time. Some don't want to risk injury completely ruining their payday. Others would rather have money now then later. Some get into financial issues that make them do it early. Or sometimes the team just offers a solid enough deal to get it done to where it isn't worth the risk of pushing it another year for the possibility of more.

 

Exactly. It's a personality thing. Some would prefer the security of a long term deal now over the risk of an uncertain but possibly larger payday later. Others will take the risk in hopes of bigger money later. There's no right or wrong answer that fits everybody. Each strategy has it's benefits and risks and an individual's personality weighs those according to their own level of risk tolerance.

 

Hmm, we'll see, reason being is I'm not sold the Sturgis is any good, and a cap savings vs 2012 missed Fg's redux only with a Rook doing the missing may not be palatable for Philbin.

I don't like Sturgis's game, not at all, think he has a pop gun leg and poor accuracy.

Also think his leg is not strong enough to kick in the frozen Northeast effectively

 

LOL. He's made multiple FGs from 50+. He had one miss last year other than blocked kicks. Unless one were to analyze each block one by one, it's impossible to say who's fault they were. Darren Rizzi wanted him over Hopkins. Who are you to 2nd guess Rizzi?

 

Kicker is the only position where stats are the end all be all..I thought Sturgis stats were really good on percentage, and kickoff distance.

 

If you're drafting a kicker in the 5th round...

...the writing seems to be nearly written on the wall in my opinion.