He turned down other offers to come to the Chiefs. I believe they said it was 5 teams but I could be misremembering that.

I'd say the money was pretty similar to do that.

This has been a weird FA market. Probably some combo of:

1) Between the guaranteed deal for a molester and the Kirk deal, I suspect there may have been some owner collusion to cool the market.

2) Chargers/Bills/Eagles/etc. went all in last year and couldn’t beat the Chiefs. Fewer teams are opting to sell out for a ring.

3) FA class is weak generally.

How much should a decent off-ball linebacker get?

Who is in position to sell out for a ring?

Several teams did it last year and are now paying the price for it...Cincy? They're to cheap to sell out for anything.

I mean the math is what the math is.

There's a ceiling and a floor and teams WILL spend between those 2 figures. As you noted, a lot of teams made deals last season coming off the COVID flat-cap that pushed money into this season expecting a strong rise in the cap. They essentially used this year's cap as a credit card to pay for players they signed LAST offseason and now the bill is coming due.

Last year's spending was never realistic going forward. And it was SO unrealistic that it suppressed spending this season. It'll probably happen around the time the new tv rights deals throws a shitload of money into the system as well.

Collusion is damn near impossible under the CBA and to whatever extent it is possible, the juice definitely does not justify the squeeze. There's just very little to be gained by collusion with the spending floors in place.

What you're seeing is a market correction, Juan. Teams can't mash the accelerator every off-season in a cap league - it don't work that way.

I'm not sure but this absolutely touches on my favorite part of this signing.

Can Willie Gay, who's never had a season like the one Tranquill just had, really walk into Veach's office and say "Yeah, Imma need $15 million/season..."?

I mean I guess the potential downside would be that this could chill extension talks entirely because Tranquill is just so damn cheap. But what it could also do is take some stars out of Willie's eyes and maybe facilitate a deal.

Willie Gay has never been more than a 6-8 per year average...Bolton is the one that is probably going to ask for 15.

Yeah, it should be pretty clear at this point that "the cap is a myth" is clearly a myth, especially when you have to pay QBs.

Just be glad that we're paying a really, really good one.

Oh, and I completely forgive you for not signing KYZIR last season, Burt.

Shit I love this move. Just an outstanding signing.

Get good players on good contracts and figure out how to make the pieces fit together later. Or better still - "I'm the GM - I sign guys and when I see a good value play I'm gonna make it. You're the coaches - I'll defer to you on getting this to work..."

This is just a really good organization right now. CBA scorecard be damned.

Only if you do it the way the Saints do it and even then you'll still end up with problems.

That was one of my first thoughts as well. Instead of losing Gay and Bolton, this may actually help us keep them long term.

Bolton will try to get paid, he has numbers and he's gonna throw out Edmunds contract, Warners and the dude from the Jags...he isn't as good as Warner but Edmunds is arguable.

They largely stink and they're STILL ****ing it up. It's pretty amazing, really. They should be thanking their lucky stars for Olave.

Yeah, I'm disinclined to do it, but I'd imagine if you searched for 'myth' under my user name you'd see me bitching up a blue streak about that crap for the last 6-8 years.

The cap is absolutely NOT a myth. You can tapdance around it and finesse it for a long while, but eventually you do have to deal with it.

The one thing that might be a myth is the duration of 'cap hell'. For a long while I was nervous about kicking cans down the road out of fear that it could trigger some hellish 3-5 year roster purge/rebuild.

Nah. You can spend like a drunken sailor and by and large you're only ever 1 year of absolutely eating shit away from getting yourself back in decent shape. Now it may be a REAL un-fun year, but it can be done. But you have to be smarter than the Saints who just keep using credit cards to pay off credit cards.