S Ricardo Allen announces his retirement

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

Seeing this more and more it seems. Some of it might be CTE related like Pistons said, but I think it's also a lot of those guys who are now fringe guys not wanting to scrape around begging for those 50-53rd spots (or those PS 54th and 55th spots). After having experienced being a starter now moving to new cities every single year and putting in the full year grind to mostly play special teams and be depth. It's also getting harder for vets to fill that role while teams are realizing that young guys are simply cheaper and not significantly worse.

Rookie Minimum: $660k
1 Year Vet Minimum: $780k
2 Year Vet Minimum: $850k
7th round pick Wyatt Huber contract: 4yr/$3.58m ($896k)
6th round pick Chris Evans contract: 4yr/$3.65m ($913k)
3 Year Vet Minimum: $920k
4-6 Year Vet Minimum: $990k
7+ Year Vet Minimum: $1.075m (This is Allen's category.)

So you have teams who are trying to get all their high quality players signed. tThen when it comes down to how to get a bit more savings teams ask themselves if guys like Ricardo Allen as a depth/ST guy is worth the extra $415k (or more) it'd cost to sign him instead of a rookie or $295k more than a guy with a full year of NFL experience.