The first offseason domino to fall...
 

In 2 weeks, give or take, we will know of the first offseason question to be answered.

February 22nd to March 8th marks the period in which teams can use the franchise tag.

We'll know what they intend to do with Orlando Brown, at least for 2022 and possibly beyond.

You've got a 25 year old LT who's shown to be really good. I dont' see how you don't sign him to a long term deal and forget about the position for 4/5 years.

The franchise tag allows them to negotiate with Brown until like July. So using the tag doesn't preclude signing him long term, it actually gives them more time to get it done while giving them some cap certainty and allowing them to be more active in FA.

The problem is if you tag him you have to allocate that money then. Which woudl be a chunk. If you do a deal you can spread it out.

True but that means that a deal has to come together pretty quickly. I think it's all going to depend on how much money they have going into the FA period.

Yes, that's true. It's also true that you know EXACTLY how much he's going to count against the cap BEFORE the start of free agency, which allows them the ability to work around it.

And if they sign him before the summer, that cap hit goes away in favor of whatever his new deal costs.

Tagging Brown would suck. Long term deal is best but he will want a lot and what really sucks is he's no where near a great LT but we gave up a 1 for him unfortunately so letting him walk is idiotic.

He has the power and we don't. Veach needs to stop giving away 1's for players anyway and certainly not for players that don't have deals.

And on the topic of Orlando Brown Jr.

I know the Ravens weren't going to give up on Stanley but holy shit did they make the wrong move. I saw a report that Stanley might not even play football next season.

I was curious about what that amount would be and last year for a LT it was just under $14 mil for Cam Robinson.

Who would you have spent our #1 on then that was equivalent to Brown? As we wouldn't have gotten a 2nd back who would you have sacrificed between Bolton and Humphrey as we would not have gotten both?

This is key.

We spent the offseason examining potential left tackle solutions, particularly in the draft, under an electron microscope.

Of all the guys we evaluated, virtually none of them emerged as a starting LT prospect. Several of them played RT and some of them even got moved to guard. The rest weren't all that effective.

It's Red Dawg. It's pointless to debate with him because he doesn't know shit. He just likes to bitch.

Why? Who else is worth using the tag on?

I presume he's talking about the fact that a tag would mean all that money THIS season, while in a long term deal you could spread out the hit and possibly negotiate a back loaded contract.

A tag MAY be prohibitive to signing a guy like Allen Robinson etc.

Yup. And the ones we would have wanted were gone well before we picked. Elite to above average LTs do not grow on trees. They typically get drafted very high and teams don't typically part with established ones. We were very fortunate that Baltimore had Stanley or else there would have been zero chance they part with Brown.