Are we built to win? A salary cap observation. Its not going to be easy

[Litos]

Read. Assuing this person is correct the Steelers are 9.5 million under the cap. Okay, relative to the other 31 teams, where does this rate? Near the bottom in terms of cap space?

So you want to have a cap situation like the browns or jaguars? Please let us know Mr coach and GM

 

[Coach]

So you want to have a cap situation like the browns or jaguars? Please let us know Mr coach and GM

You don't need to be a coach or GM to understand this:

1 ) Don't give long term large contracts to injury prone and off the field prone players, especially if they have already been replaced without drop off by cheap NFL free agents. Bell and Bryant fit here. When suspended or injured Williams and Wheaton replaced them adequately.

Pouncey also fits here. Too late the Steelers are " all in " and married for a while with Pouncey.

2 ) Some positions are more valuable than others. Some positions are easier to replace than others. Try to balance your cap accordingly. Example: I'd rather spend 20 million a year on a good corner and pass rusher, than a good ILB and C/G.

3 ) Don't give an unproven player a large contract. See Cortez Allen.

4 ) If a player in free agency is asking for too much, let him walk and take a projected 3rd round or 4th round comp pick. The Steelers are pretty good here, and correctly let Mike Wallace walk.

5 ) Don't be afraid to cut a former great if he has a high cap number and his ability has greatly diminished. See Polamalu and Taylor.

6 ) And this is one fan's can't judge. Don't give big deals to players suspected to get either fat and lazy, or to players that might want to opt out on the NFL. Coaches and GM see their players a lot and should have an idea of who's playing hard and who is not. .See Worilds and Woodley. While it can be very difficult to spot either, both of these two duped the Steelers.

 

[ark steel]

Now, I get Coach's points about Pouncey, and I do remember this board FLIPPING IT'S EVERLOVING **** over the Free Hernandez hat he wore. Suddenly everyone's cool with it.

I also agree that it's silly to say that C > LT. The facts are there, LTs dominate the first rounds of drafts and draw enormous contracts, while centers are drafted late, paid way less, and replaced often.

But there's no guaranteed blueprint for success. Yes, we need to find better plays at those very key spots, like OLB and DB. But paying a guy JUST for the position he plays is silly. It's why we overpaid Worilds and Allen.

I think most people's problem is that when you include as part of your "proof" how lost the Broncos would have been without Clady, your point loses quite a bit of it's validity. the LT they put in was no star before he ended up playing in Denver.

 

[ark steel]

So ******* tired of the Pouncey and Bell are injury prone argument. Getting injured in the ways they did, especially the DeCastro injury to Pouncey, does NOT, absolutely in no way whatever from any reasonable point of view, make you "injury prone". Just. *******. Stop.

If you want to argue that these injuries may reflect their future play, have at it. The fact that these particular injuries made them miss some time is irrelevant to their ability to stay healthy. Their injuries were not related to them being out of football shape or doing something stupid.

Just. *******. Stop.

 

[Coach]

I think most people's problem is that when you include as part of your "proof" how lost the Broncos would have been without Clady, your point loses quite a bit of it's validity. the LT they put in was no star before he ended up playing in Denver.

Anyone can make a mistake, yourself included. I admitted it and moved on. The more you post ( I post quite a bit ) the more likely you are to make a mistake. One mistake should not dimish given facts and truths.

Denver won because Elway built the team correctly in free agency and the draft. Whoever replaced Clady must have been at least adequate.

Now if people want to argue a center is more important that a left tackle that's a different story.

 

[Hines57]

Too many of you are locked into what a position costs. It doesn't work that way anymore. The cap has grown so much that each year there are players signing record breaking contracts at their position. What YOU value for a particular position is probably going to be much different than what the professionals running the franchise deem is important. Its easy to say let a guy walk and take the comp pick, but then you also have to replace that player with talent. The draft as we all know is not automatic. We've swung and missed and we've hit some out of the park with our picks. There's no science to getting the right mix of players in the draft. This is where I agree with the philosophy to bring in low priced vets to fill roster voids and try to let our draft picks develop. Bottom line, we need our picks to be hits and not misses.

Its easy to see we've done much better this decade drafting on offense than on defense. Last decade was an amazing draft period for our defense with not as many busts (Hi Zo). This decade, man we've drafted some dogs on defense who just haven't given us what was expected of them. We've not replaced James Harrison or Woodley at outside LB. Dupree flashed signs of being dominant and then he hit the rookie wall. Jury still out on him and my hope is he has a big 2nd season. We've seen what we are going to get with JJ. He's not going to be that 10+ sack disruptive force that the FO wanted when they drafted him. We also have yet to replace Big Snack in the middle. The anchor of our 3-4 used to shut down the run with Smith and Keisel to either side. We just don't have that any more.

 

[Coach]

So ******* tired of the Pouncey and Bell are injury prone argument. Getting injured in the ways they did, especially the DeCastro injury to Pouncey, does NOT, absolutely in no way whatever from any reasonable point of view, make you "injury prone".

Pouncey has had his share of lower body injuries. While the injuries were flukish, don't be so sure another player doesn't get up and play later in the season with the exact same hit. For Example, Ben takes hits that would KO some QB's for a season. He's durable.

More examples of Steelers are that durable are Timmons, DeCastro, Brown, and Gay. Examples of guys who get hurt easily are Shazier and Cortez Allen. You could add Bell. He was hurt in his rookie year and missed a lot of time in camp, Tomlin described it as a little boo-boo. Bell was also concussed.

Bottom line, when a young player has a lot of injuries you should worry about them.

 

[ark steel]

Anyone can make a mistake, yourself included. I admitted it and moved on. The more you post ( I post quite a bit ) the more likely you are to make a mistake. One mistake should not dimish given facts and truths.

Denver won because Elway built the team correctly in free agency and the draft. Whoever replaced Clady must have been at least adequate.

Now if people want to argue a center is more important that a left tackle that's a different story.

yes anyone can make a mistake, but that was a big one that was a pretty big cornerstone to your argument. The Broncos won the SB with an LT on his third or fourth team rather than a highly paid LT. That is absolutely, something you should have known if you are making that argument.

Grab stats from the wrong player. No big deal. Do the real stats break your argument? That is different. Use a player as a backbone of your argument when he didn't even play all year? That ain't a mistake, it is a failure in your argument. If he had played all year, but injured in the playoffs, I could blow off the oversight.

I don't even, completely, disagree with how important you think the LT is. However, paying a stud LT and having to short yourself on the rest of the OL (even at one position), IMO, will not lead to long term success. Of course, neither will overpaying a Center (assuming one considers him so) and shorting the rest of the OL will not, either. It would be hard to judge by the play the rest of the OL played last year without Pouncey that the other positions have been shorted.

 

[ark steel]

Bottom line, when a young player has a lot of injuries you should worry about them.

This is completely different than "injury prone".

 

[Coach]

yes anyone can make a mistake, but that was a big one that was a pretty big cornerstone to your argument. The Broncos won the SB with an LT on his third or fourth team rather than a highly paid LT. That is absolutely, something you should have known if you are making that argument.

Grab stats from the wrong player. No big deal. Do the real stats break your argument? That is different. Use a player as a backbone of your argument when he didn't even play all year? That ain't a mistake, it is a failure in your argument. If he had played all year, but injured in the playoffs, I could blow off the oversight.

I don't even, completely, disagree with how important you think the LT is. However, paying a stud LT and having to short yourself on the rest of the OL (even at one position), IMO, will not lead to long term success. Of course, neither will overpaying a Center (assuming one considers him so) and shorting the rest of the OL will not, either. It would be hard to judge by the play the rest of the OL played last year without Pouncey that the other positions have been shorted.

The Drafting and free agency moves put Denver where it is. Credit Elway. I think Poucney is over paid when helahty, and being injured so often makes it worse.

I would not rate Clandy as key over some of the players they signed or darafted. I do think LT is the most important positon on the OL by far.

Below is an article on how Denver did it but ends at 2014

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap2000000318280/article/how-the-denver-broncos-were-built

And who they signed in 2015 made a differnce.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...the-denver-broncos-free-agent-signings-so-far

 

[ark steel]

The Drafting and free agency moves put Denver where it is. Credit Elway. I think Poucney is over paid when helahty, and being injured so often makes it worse.

I would not rate Clandy as key over some of the players they signed or darafted. I do think LT is the most important positon on the OL by far.

Below is an article on how Denver did it but ends at 2014

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap2000000318280/article/how-the-denver-broncos-were-built

And who they signed in 2015 made a differnce.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...the-denver-broncos-free-agent-signings-so-far

Fine, but your argument was the LT is soo important (again I don't disagree as most important, just not "by far") and, as proof, look at Ryan Clady. If you want argue all of this other stuff, that is fine, but the discussion was about how much more important the LT is and why it should be the highest paid to have success. You failed. Miserably.

One of the starting LT's in the SB was the main character from The Blind Side. Most here considered him a pretty mediocre LT and he was moved from LT to RT in Harbaugh-land, I believe. At Carolina, I don't know if he played better or not at LT, but that is where he was. His cap hit was 22nd in the league in 2015.

Only 3 of the 2015 top cap 10 hits at LT were on playoff teams (not counting Clady, so 3 of 9) and 2 of those teams lost in the first round. Not sure So, I'd say that, while I agree that LT is the most important spot on the OL, paying huge amounts for them isn't, necessarily, the path to success. it is the same 3 of 9 ratio for top paid Centers although must lower salaries outside of the top 3 or so.

The point is, you don't need a top paid LT to win in the NFL. Neither the Panthers nor the Broncos did. The Steelers had a good chance to beat the Broncos with 3rd/4th string RB's and a rookie LT.

I would suggest that one of those key pieces to the Broncos success is that "not worth a third rounder" Sanders, though.

 

[antdrewjosh]

Coach almost makes me miss Idioteque.

 

[Litos]

You don't need to be a coach or GM to understand this:

1 ) Don't give long term large contracts to injury prone and off the field prone players, especially if they have already been replaced without drop off by cheap NFL free agents. Bell and Bryant fit here. When suspended or injured Williams and Wheaton replaced them adequately.

Pouncey also fits here. Too late the Steelers are " all in " and married for a while with Pouncey.

2 ) Some positions are more valuable than others. Some positions are easier to replace than others. Try to balance your cap accordingly. Example: I'd rather spend 20 million a year on a good corner and pass rusher, than a good ILB and C/G.

3 ) Don't give an unproven player a large contract. See Cortez Allen.

4 ) If a player in free agency is asking for too much, let him walk and take a projected 3rd round or 4th round comp pick. The Steelers are pretty good here, and correctly let Mike Wallace walk.

5 ) Don't be afraid to cut a former great if he has a high cap number and his ability has greatly diminished. See Polamalu and Taylor.

6 ) And this is one fan's can't judge. Don't give big deals to players suspected to get either fat and lazy, or to players that might want to opt out on the NFL. Coaches and GM see their players a lot and should have an idea of who's playing hard and who is not. .See Worilds and Woodley. While it can be very difficult to spot either, both of these two duped the Steelers.

1) please tell me who on the Steelers roster was given a long term contract while being injury pron? Bell and Bryant are on their rookie contracts so your point here makes no sense at all. Pouncey wasn't near being injury prone when extended so don't go there. By your dense logic no one should be given a long term contract cause they could get injured and become prone to it?

2) discussed endlessly, the Steelers are competitive year in and year out. They kept who they thought were surefire players, Timmons has been one, Pouncey if he hadn't such bad luck with those hits would be a probowler. I get your point but is not easy to let go your own players to try and over pay in FA for someone that maybe is not a true Steeler and ends up being a locker room cancer

3) Cortez didn't work out, Antonio Brown did. You are saying we shouldn't have extended Brown? do you know how much he would have cost the next year? Sometimes you take a risk, Allen's contract will cost chump change this year to the cap so at least it wasn't a catastrophic situation

4) so what's your beef here?

5) they did cut them (or make them take a paycut like Ike) so again, what are you bitching about

6) man if only Colbert had a crystal ball like you do..., why don't you lend him yours?

In the grand scheme of things the Steelers are candidates to be in the SB year in and year out, they are Under the cap this year 9M, that's 12M under what you said early, 3M above. And you still complain about how they handle things? Everyone makes a mistake here or there but the truth is the team never goes to the sitter like the ravens or the 9ers did this year, just a few away from being SB bound.

 

[Coach]

1) please tell me who on the Steelers roster was given a long term contract while being injury pron? Bell and Bryant are on their rookie contracts so your point here makes no sense at all. Pouncey wasn't near being injury prone when extended so don't go there. By your dense logic no one should be given a long term contract cause they could get injured and become prone to it?

2) discussed endlessly, the Steelers are competitive year in and year out. They kept who they thought were surefire players, Timmons has been one, Pouncey if he hadn't such bad luck with those hits would be a probowler. I get your point but is not easy to let go your own players to try and over pay in FA for someone that maybe is not a true Steeler and ends up being a locker room cancer

3) Cortez didn't work out, Antonio Brown did. You are saying we shouldn't have extended Brown? do you know how much he would have cost the next year? Sometimes you take a risk, Allen's contract will cost chump change this year to the cap so at least it wasn't a catastrophic situation

4) so what's your beef here?

5) they did cut them (or make them take a paycut like Ike) so again, what are you bitching about

6) man if only Colbert had a crystal ball like you do..., why don't you lend him yours?

In the grand scheme of things the Steelers are candidates to be in the SB year in and year out, they are Under the cap this year 9M, that's 12M under what you said early, 3M above. And you still complain about how they handle things? Everyone makes a mistake here or there but the truth is the team never goes to the sitter like the ravens or the 9ers did this year, just a few away from being SB bound.

1 ) The Steelers knew Pouncey was injured and had some issues off the field before giving in a big deal.

2 ) My point is beyond your thinking. If you want some of your highest players to be C, G or ILB , while having bargain basement pass rushers and corners....not the best way to get to a super bowl

3 ) AB showed 10X more than Cortez Allen prior to either player getting a second deal. I wasn't here when it happened but had no issues with the Brown contract

4 ) I was saying the Steelers are doing fine in this department.

5 ) They should have cut them sooner and taken the cap savings. Having them suck their lat year at their cap number did not help us. Cut the and use the savings to better the team, or greatly reduce what they make if they are willing

6 ) I have no crystal ball, but do have common sense, and the benefit of hindsight examples. You just don't like it.

 

[Coach]

Fine, but your argument was the LT is soo important (again I don't disagree as most important, just not "by far") and, as proof, look at Ryan Clady. If you want argue all of this other stuff, that is fine, but the discussion was about how much more important the LT is and why it should be the highest paid to have success. You failed. Miserably.

One of the starting LT's in the SB was the main character from The Blind Side. Most here considered him a pretty mediocre LT and he was moved from LT to RT in Harbaugh-land, I believe. At Carolina, I don't know if he played better or not at LT, but that is where he was. His cap hit was 22nd in the league in 2015.

Only 3 of the 2015 top cap 10 hits at LT were on playoff teams (not counting Clady, so 3 of 9) and 2 of those teams lost in the first round. Not sure So, I'd say that, while I agree that LT is the most important spot on the OL, paying huge amounts for them isn't, necessarily, the path to success. it is the same 3 of 9 ratio for top paid Centers although must lower salaries outside of the top 3 or so.

The point is, you don't need a top paid LT to win in the NFL. Neither the Panthers nor the Broncos did. The Steelers had a good chance to beat the Broncos with 3rd/4th string RB's and a rookie LT.

I would suggest that one of those key pieces to the Broncos success is that "not worth a third rounder" Sanders, though.

Now you made a mistake. The third round was what New England was going to offer if we did not match for Sanders. So please stop talking about Clady. Admit your mistake, and no need to bring this up again.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/04/14/steelers-match-offer-for-emmanuel-sanders/

LT is the most important OL position. I'll easily defend that and think you will agree with me. If Carolina a had a better one, maybe Newton does get hit and fumble in the super bowl.

You don't see me complaining about Ben or AB, They play key positions and are worth their money, and if you read my posts I think we should let Beachum walk if some team offers him 7+ million a year. He plays LT. I'd rather keep our army ranger, and use that money at an area of need as he's almost as good, much cheaper and can get better. I'll also take the comp pick hopefully a 3rd or 4th when Beachum leaves via free agency.

 

[SteelerFan448]

1 ) Don't give long term large contracts to injury prone and off the field prone players, especially if they have already been replaced without drop off by cheap NFL free agents. Bell and Bryant fit here. When suspended or injured Williams and Wheaton replaced them adequately.

Pouncey also fits here. Too late the Steelers are " all in " and married for a while with Pouncey.

Then why sign any of your good players? There are always guys who can "adequately" replace good players. But come on, not recognizing what Bell can bring over Williams and Bryant over Wheaton.

2 ) Some positions are more valuable than others. Some positions are easier to replace than others. Try to balance your cap accordingly. Example: I'd rather spend 20 million a year on a good corner and pass rusher, than a good ILB and C/G.

Fair enough, but not many of these guys hit the open market and when they do, do you want them coming in not knowing how they fit? You pay a high-priced free agent and then they're making more than your defensive leaders? You know the Steelers don't operate this way and won't operate this way.

6 ) And this is one fan's can't judge. Don't give big deals to players suspected to get either fat and lazy, or to players that might want to opt out on the NFL. Coaches and GM see their players a lot and should have an idea of who's playing hard and who is not. .See Worilds and Woodley. While it can be very difficult to spot either, both of these two duped the Steelers.

Woodley was one of the top pass rushers in the league when he got his new deal. I don't think they expected him to get fat and lazy.

 

[Coach]

SteelerFan448 Then why sign any of your good players? There are always guys who can "adequately" replace good players. But come on, not recognizing what Bell can bring over Williams and Bryant over Wheaton.

I am fine with signing talented players free of injury and drug issues to long-term deals, especially if they play QB, CB, Pass Rusher, LT, or WR.

Bell has injury issues and an off the field problem that could cost him 8 games the next time around, and Bryant apparently has a serious issue with weed. Personally, I don't think weed should cost a suspension with games. I'd rather see just a fine.

Giving either player a max type of deal is very risky. Let's see who can be signed in free agency before giving these two a small mint.

 

[ark steel]

Now you made a mistake. The third round was what New England was going to offer if we did not match for Sanders. So please stop talking about Clady. Admit your mistake, and no need to bring this up again.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/04/14/steelers-match-offer-for-emmanuel-sanders/

Uhh, what? Mistake? I'm just trying to follow around whatever tangent you seem to be going off on. You have an article about how the Broncos were built. Part of that building was the signing of Sanders, who some here thought was not worth the 3rd rounder we missed out on. yet he was in the top 5 WR by yards and 16th in TDs his first year with Denver. In 2015, he was 15th in yards and way down the list in TDs.

So, I follow your tangent about how Denver built a SB team and suggested Sanders was an important part of that puzzle, while some people here did not think he was very good. Mediocre and below average were thrown around.

Part of your original opinion was that Clady is such a good LT that Denver would be lost without him. The results seem to suggest that not to be true. You might even state he was not an integral part of the Super Bowl team, at all.

 

[Litos]

6 ) I have no crystal ball, but do have common sense, and the benefit of hindsight examples. You just don't like it.

Your common sense says you knew Woodley would get fat an lazy? GTFO