losing al harris for either of those guys would be a mistake.
"doddpower" wrote:
What I see as the big problem is Peppers BETTER be good and put us over the top if we sign him. By the time we pay Jennings, Collins, Kampman, etc. and deal with the ones out of the nine we have coming up next year there will be VERY LITTLE room to do much of anything else to improve the team.
This move puts a lot of eggs in one basket in terms of other possible moves that might become necessary depending on how the year goes defensively under Capers.
If we knew for sure the guys we have can get us over the top it would be a different story. I know you can always find a way to sign a player and stay under the cap but that doesn't mean you won't lose the flexibility of having the Cap right to do what is necessary down the road.
A $16 mil salary can take away alot of flexibility and options so like I say he better be darn good and make a lot of guys around him better as well.
"warhawk" wrote:
I don't think it affects things as much as you might think. Frontload at least one of their contracts this year (maybe even two of them) and next year they wouldn't be taking such a big hit. Structure the other two or so to where they take us close to the cap next year, but not over it and after next year we could be very well back to the same area we are now, or at least sufficiently under the cap.
I guess it's just all a matter of how the contracts would be structured. There's no reason signing one big free agent and having to resign a couple of our own players would restrict us from "improving" the team in the future, especially at the rate Ted Thompson signs free agents. Let's just say if we would have signed a big named free agent in the past two years. Well, by this point or next year, if the contract was structured carefully, their cap hit likely wouldn't be that bad, or at least manageable. It would take careful planning no doubt, but that's what these people get paid for.
This isn't even a post in favor of Peppers necessarily, but I'm just saying that if Ted (or any GM in our position) really wanted a player that would cost as much as Peppers, he or she could get him and resign the players and rookies we need to resign / sign.
Doesn't matter though, I don't expect anything like this to happen this year, and it's likely to be a whole new scenario in the coming years anyway; one where getting a big time free agent will be IMPOSSIBLE instead of just costly.
"Stevetarded" wrote: