Wrong choice of words because i definitely dont think the steelers are shafting him i meant the whole RB market thing. I think a player salary cap shouldnt be determined by his position.
It absolutely has to. The goal is to be competitive with the rest of the league, not just pay every player whatever he thinks he’s worth and hope no one notices you’re at double the salary cap.
Look at it like this. It’s highly likely that your QB is your highest paid player. Yes he makes a lot of money, a big % of the cap. But if you’re paying your QB the same as everyone else, appropriate to his worth on the market, then you’re not disadvantaged because everyone essentially has the same amount of remaining cap to fill out the roster.
But if you’re paying another position twice what every other team is paying that position, then that is when you are disadvantaging your team. I make an analogy to slow drivers in the left lane. They get defensive and say “but I’m going the speed limit!” Well you’re not the only one on the road. Studies show that it’s not fast drivers who cause accidents. It’s drivers who deviate too much from the average speed of the rest of the drivers who cause accidents. If the Steelers deviate so much from what the rest of the league is doing at running back, sure it helps Le’Veon and future RBs, but it costs them $9m that other teams are using to bolster their defenses (which we are in DESPERATE need of, by the way).
AB gets $17m, but that’s only $500k more than the next highest paid WR. So while it’s a big cap number, it’s reasonable to the market and you are not doing more than other teams to disadvantage yourself. If we’re all disadvantaging ourselves relatively equally, what’s the harm?
So you’re putting yourself behind the 8 ball, giving 31 teams an artificial $9m head start before the race begins because you believe the transcendence of this one player makes up for it. For context $9m is basically two Morgan Burnett’s who I think we all believe will be a huge help to this defense.
So is Le’Veon Bell by himself just so transcendent that you’d have to be willing to completely forego the flexibility of upgrading two of your defensive positions to the level of a Morgan Burnett type player?
I can point to a lot of nice stats for Le’Veon that suggest he’s great. And he is. He is great. But I can also point to a lot of stats that suggest that, while he is great, he is not necessarily some transcendent player who masks all your liabilities elsewhere on the field. His yards per carry and catch are down, he doesn’t break explosive TD runs, he’s touched he ball and been hit A LOT already, and he’s unreliable in terms of suspensions and injuries forcing him out of a lot of games. So yes, when you’re talking about paying a player more than double the next guy at his position, sorry you have to mention the negatives along with the positives. The positives have to outweigh the negatives by millions of dollars. And I’m sorry but being the 20th best rushing team at 3.8 yards per carry (among the worst) is not ******* inspiring me to make me forget all that other stuff.
I mean damn 19 teams got more rushing yards than we did. They might not have a talent like Le’Veon, but they’re getting the production somehow, and not with $17m tied into one guy. We are not some dominant rushing team and it’s possible to have a great running game without Le’Veon Bell and without destroying your flexibility everywhere else.
We can’t just wish the salary cap away no matter how hard we try. We can’t pretend we’re a dominant running team and that we’d be lost without Le’Veon (although he is a great individual talent). We can’t make assessments that force us into territory no other team will get even close to unless we are sure of the return and in the case of this player, he is FAR from a sure thing.
Sorry just not buying it. The numbers do not add up.
Sent from my iPhone using
Steeler Nation mobile app
