02-24-2022, 11:55 AM
(02-24-2022, 10:55 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: It's not a matter of "sticking it" to him. Hence why I never used those words.
I also think there's a pretty large amount of safeties in this FA. Jordan Whitehead, Marcus Williams, Justin Reid, Xavier Woods, Quandre Diggs, Devin McCourty, Tyrann Mathieu, and plenty more.
It seems like a huge WR FA year and a big S FA year.
It doesn't only hurt the team not paying him because that's $13m+ that can be spent elsewhere, which would help the team. EDIT: I would see tagging him and trading him as a possibility, but I think he needs to actually sign his tag before he can be traded.
The flippant nature of your response of "playing awful" definitely gave that tone, but I'll concede you didn't say it directly.
Sure, a group of safeties who are either worse, older, or just as expensive. Thinking we are coming out of this with a comparable player for a major savings is penny wise and a pound foolish. Saving a million or two is not worth what it'll cost us in production/continuity.
It does hurt the team because you look at net improvement. The secondary is already going to add another outside corner most likely, so having a new moving piece behind that starter is not going to yield great results early. Continuity within units is a highly underrated part of success. The cap is there to fix the line, the issue will be more so how we structure deals and our refusal to give out heavy guarantees (Most likely Bates issue) which is why I think people who are expecting the top of the barrel FA OL are going to be disappointed no matter what because they probably will reject us for more guarantees elsewhere.
As for a franchise and trade scenario, yes the tender must be signed first which then gives Bates the ability to refuse to sign it to control where he goes like Jadaveon Clowney did. In that scenario, he can refuse to sign it long past the draft preventing any sort of near term compensation for moving him and even tank the value by limiting where he will agree to be traded to. You don't want to go down this path anyways as it's simply a bad look for a team trying to build a winning culture. Teams that end up in franchise tag stand offs rarely are teams that go on to have success for years after the disputes.
