Did You Know... (AJ Green)

[Whatever]

(05-28-2020, 11:10 AM)Au165 Wrote: Kind of misleading because the tag by it's nature makes you one of the highest paid players in the league. That cost comes with the value to a team that it's a one year deal, a deal most players would not take otherwise because they want longer term stability...like AJ wants. The other issue here is there are an unusually large amount of guys who tool cheaper front loaded deals with massive escalators next year. For example Amari Cooper  is 12 Million this year and 22 Million next year and Mike Thomas goes from 7 Million this year to 18.8 next year. When guys are on longer term deals they can spread when those larger hits are occurring.

This is more of a straw man argument for some to point to declining production, but the only difference in tagging him and not tagging him is that with the tag we have AJ Green and without it we don't. The current projection of 24 Million with the tag provides plenty of cap to add a good vetern O linemen if we wanted to, but it appears we do not. The current contract only applies to this year so it does not impact re signings of any of our players. The current cap exceeds the amount allowed to be rolled over so we couldn't even push it forward to use next year. There is literally nothing lost by having him here on the tag other than a weird issue with him "not being worth it" when the only thing that money would be doing if not being in AJ's pocket is be sitting in Mike Brown's.

You touch on the big issue.  Without the FT, AJ is gone.  Unless they FT him next year, he's gone.  This team isn't close to being a contender and is in full rebuild mode, so that FT money is much better spent on players that will be here for the long haul to aid that rebuild rather than keeping a death grip on a 32 year old WR that's missed the last 23 games.

There's really nothing to indicate that the Bengals would have just sat on $18 mil and not used it towards extensions or outside players, especially given their FA activity this year.  They had interest in DHop, but AJ's FT handcuffed them.  Given what Houston took for him, I guarantee if we offered our 3rd, they'd have jumped all over it.  

I just get the feeling that the people that support this are doing it more out of affection for AJ than any real logical strategy towards building a winning team.  Hate to say it, but NFL players are all disposable heroes in the grand scheme.  Smart teams try to get out from under a guy before they hit the wall. AJ already seems to have, but people can't let go.  I hope he lights it up, but I expect he'll miss a ton of games.