baltimore_hokie
02-04-2010, 09:28 AM
What will happen with the team going from a capped year to an uncapped year and then possibly a capped year again?
(NEWSOME) “That’s a good question. We’ve probably spent maybe two hours just dealing with those issues yesterday with our group. Dealing with the restricted guys, which we are kind of at the advantage with, but those guys could eventually become unrestricted and how to deal with it. But, I think what we’ve seen in the past – and this is where personnel, cap accounting, a good owner and a good coach all coming together – is that we can’t be afraid to let Bart Scott walk out the door and hope that Tavares Gooden or [Dannell] Ellerbe or [Jameel] McClain can replace him. We can’t be afraid of that. But we also have to be smart enough to know that there are going to be some opportunities that we can extend some guys and take them out of the unrestricted game, and we can have them for four or five years. That’s a balance that we are going to be dealing with over the course of the next four or five months. Because if we get a deal done, then it’s going to impact like 200 or something players. Like Steve [Bisciotti] said, we have like 10 of them. And we’ve got to be prepared to be able to extend some or to be able to say, ‘OK, we might have to let this one go, because we’ve got a young player that has to step in and play.’ We’re playing that game in our mind right now, and like I keep saying, other than losing on Sunday, I have a fun job. But that makes our job fun to sit there and do what we did yesterday for a couple of hours to talk about today and tomorrow. And that’s the way we have to do it. But you can only do it when you have a head coach in the game with you.”
This is key. The Ravens have continued to develop young players that can replace, and eventually become the next generation, of Ravens players to move on and get a big contract elsewhere. In the salary cap era, it is vital to be able to plug in younger players in place of a guy like Bart Scott that would make 8M/year.
I think that recently the Ravens have done a better job of this than the Steelers, a franchise would would never extend players beyond the age of 30. They have extended harrison for several years at the age of 31, and will likely need to do the same with Casey Hampton this off-season. While these moves give them the best chance to win now, they will see repercussions in the near future for giving those hefty contracts to players on the down-side of their careers.
Yes, we did give Suggs a pretty huge contract this past off-season. Yes, he didn't play up to it this year. To address the first point, he was 5 years younger than Harrison. He is still smack dab in the middle of his prime. And to the second point, he will only play better than the mediocre year he had last year when he is actually in shape.
Combine the contract decisions with far more successful drafts in the past two years, and the Ravens are in a pretty good spot for the coming decade. Without even a semblance of a QB for the last decade, the Ravens were a top-5 franchise in the NFL. It should continue to get better in the next decade now that we have our guy under center.
(NEWSOME) “That’s a good question. We’ve probably spent maybe two hours just dealing with those issues yesterday with our group. Dealing with the restricted guys, which we are kind of at the advantage with, but those guys could eventually become unrestricted and how to deal with it. But, I think what we’ve seen in the past – and this is where personnel, cap accounting, a good owner and a good coach all coming together – is that we can’t be afraid to let Bart Scott walk out the door and hope that Tavares Gooden or [Dannell] Ellerbe or [Jameel] McClain can replace him. We can’t be afraid of that. But we also have to be smart enough to know that there are going to be some opportunities that we can extend some guys and take them out of the unrestricted game, and we can have them for four or five years. That’s a balance that we are going to be dealing with over the course of the next four or five months. Because if we get a deal done, then it’s going to impact like 200 or something players. Like Steve [Bisciotti] said, we have like 10 of them. And we’ve got to be prepared to be able to extend some or to be able to say, ‘OK, we might have to let this one go, because we’ve got a young player that has to step in and play.’ We’re playing that game in our mind right now, and like I keep saying, other than losing on Sunday, I have a fun job. But that makes our job fun to sit there and do what we did yesterday for a couple of hours to talk about today and tomorrow. And that’s the way we have to do it. But you can only do it when you have a head coach in the game with you.”
This is key. The Ravens have continued to develop young players that can replace, and eventually become the next generation, of Ravens players to move on and get a big contract elsewhere. In the salary cap era, it is vital to be able to plug in younger players in place of a guy like Bart Scott that would make 8M/year.
I think that recently the Ravens have done a better job of this than the Steelers, a franchise would would never extend players beyond the age of 30. They have extended harrison for several years at the age of 31, and will likely need to do the same with Casey Hampton this off-season. While these moves give them the best chance to win now, they will see repercussions in the near future for giving those hefty contracts to players on the down-side of their careers.
Yes, we did give Suggs a pretty huge contract this past off-season. Yes, he didn't play up to it this year. To address the first point, he was 5 years younger than Harrison. He is still smack dab in the middle of his prime. And to the second point, he will only play better than the mediocre year he had last year when he is actually in shape.
Combine the contract decisions with far more successful drafts in the past two years, and the Ravens are in a pretty good spot for the coming decade. Without even a semblance of a QB for the last decade, the Ravens were a top-5 franchise in the NFL. It should continue to get better in the next decade now that we have our guy under center.