Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
I really really REALLY think the idea of getting anyone meaningful in free agency ought be just about summarily dismissed.
As has been noted, when we talk about our cap figure for next year that's not even including depth guys like Hamilton, Lucas and Butker who will all get a little bit of it. We're MUCH tighter against the cap than people are discussing if we actually get the extensions put together for guys like Hill and Jones. Common sense and long-term planning says that we really need to get those done and not enter a potential tag situation or end up letting them hit the market outright.
We absolutely have to take care of our own and now's the time to do that. Once that gets done, we're gonna be tight up against the cap and any discussion of guys like Landon Collins is just a complete non-starter unless you're willing to jettison some key part of our younger core or trade off Dee Ford.
The alternative is to simply say "**** it" and push the chips in for 2019. You tag Ford, you let Jones, Hill and Fuller play out their final years at a pittance and you get FAs with low first year figures knowing that their salaries will jump in 2020 and you're simply gonna lose 2, 3 or even all 4 of those guys. It's there. It's a possibility.
But man oh man does it strike me as foolish.
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If we win today, we'll have done so while putting a pile of whatsit on the field on defense all season, the last two games notwithstanding.
No, we don't want to do that to Mahomes for the rest of his career, but it probably behooves us to get those extensions done and hope Veach is damn good at drafting defense.
We can get to the Super Bowl with a great passrush and offensive weapons out the ass. So let's try to stick to that formula as much as possible when add new players in the future. Robbing our pass rush or sacrificing the murderer's row of WRs and playmakers on offense all so we can START to rebuild our run defense will likely result in a transition year in which we don't do anything at an elite level, and we still won't be guaranteed to one day produce that effective run defense. It's dangerous.
Our effective changes are just going to have to come through a change in defensive coaching. Simplifying the scheme so young players can make a greater impact earlier in their careers and putting the pieces we DO have in better positions to play well. That's going to have to be the main source of defensive improvement.