The Ringer NFL Show - The Jets' Power Struggle, Suh to the Bucs, and a Lesson in Salary Cap Management | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: May 24, 2019

The New York Jets have had a peculiar offseason (2:00), and the Bucs cut Gerald McCoy and signed Ndamoukong Suh, which offers an interesting look back to the 2010 NFL draft (19:40). Then salary cap expert Jason Fitzgerald joins the show to talk about how different teams handle their salary caps, the looming Dak Prescott contract, nontraditional QB contracts, whether or not the Jets are a disaster, and what positions are worth paying for (29:15). Hosts: Robert Mays, Kevin Clark Guest: Jason Fitzgerald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Liz Kelly. Fresh off of Talk the Thrones, the Ringer is introducing a new live Twitter after show covering season two of HBO's Big Little Lies. Immediately after each episode, the Ringer's Amanda Dobbins and ESPN's Mina Kimes will be going live to give their initial reactions and break down everything we saw in the episode. And to kick us off, there will be a special season two preview airing on Friday, June 7th at 12 p.m. Pacific. So join Amanda and Mina for Big Little Live every Sunday on Twitter. to the Ringer NFL show. I'm Robert Mays, joined as always by Kevin Clark. Kevin, how you doing, buddy? Robert, Indomacan Su signs with the Bucks officially today. He's not coming to practice today. Do you know why? I have no idea. He's in France touring vineyards.

That sounds like something in Dama Kinsu would do. So we're here, we're yaking football. The Bucks are all out in the field, and it sounds like Indomacan Su is the only guy who's got this figured out. He definitely has to figure out. I'm surprised he's not on his way to wherever the Champions League final is next week. Because it seems like that would be something he'd be interested in. be he's certainly done that in the past so here's what we're going to do over the course of the off season you know we're going to kind of sprinkle in some news at the top of these shows we really want to dig into some specific ideas some big ideas some focused ideas so today we're going to have jason fitzgerald of over the cap on to talk about the intricacies and the complications of

building around an expensive quarterback in today's NFL we're going to get into a lot of cap details that me and kevin may not necessarily don't know as well so that's a we're going to start doing over the next couple of weeks. So we're going to have Jason on later, but we're going to start today with the news. We're going to talk about the 2010 draft a little bit. I wrote about that today. Obviously, the Gerald McCoy and Domic and Sue thing kind of brings that draft full circle because there was an argument a decade ago about which of them was better.

And I think the Bucks just told us which one they think is better all these years later. But we're going to start pretty much in the only place I think we can start. And that is with the New York Jets. What happened with the Jets? Oh, right. Their entire organization's a tire fire. I forgot. They fired their GM after they let them spend $150 million. Adam Gase, who was pretty average with Miami, somehow won a power struggle and maybe is going to handpick the GM.

Other than that, though. The power struggle thing, let's get right into this. Obviously, some things happen today. I mean, if you want to peg this to something more recent, Adam Gase has said that they're not going to trade Levian Bell. That's crazy, that all of this stuff is overblown. It's clearly not overblown. So let's just kind of start at the beginning here. You wrote about this last week, and I agreed with everything you said, and you said that

this was the right decision, but it happened at the wrong time. And I'm in 100% on that. So the idea that he won a power struggle, I'm not sure I'd frame it that way just because there's no way you could lose a power struggle to Mike McCagnet at this point. I'm just curious as to why McCadden was still there in the first place. And I still don't think we have an actual explanation for it. So the official explanation was it's really a hard to turn over a staff that quickly with a new coach and sort of in the same way. I mean, we've had a couple of Doug Whaley was fired after the draft.

John Doris was fired after the draft. Dave Gelleman was fired after the draft in Carolina and who should be a gun. And so this is not unheard of, but Mike McCagnan really deserved to be fired. You know, in that story, I sort of pasted in the, a spreadsheet, I guess you could call it, from a guy named Joe Caparoso, who basically laid out how bad those drafts have been. 2015, it's Leonard Williams, and then a bunch of guys who are cut.

2016, Darren Lee already traded, then a bunch of guys who aren't on the team anymore or are special teamers. 2017 draft, you have Jamal Adams, Marcus May, and then a bunch of really bad guys. 2018, it's too soon to tell. If you're going to be the draft guy, if you're going to be tape grinder,

my suggestion is to draft good players because you can't be antisocial tape grinder and not actually grind the tape. They've also been horrendous in free agency. I mean, the Tremaine Johnson contract is totally undefensible at this point. They have not done anything right except draft Sam Darnold

and even that required trading up a bunch to do it. And it's also the third quarterback. I made this analogy in the story and I want to repeat it. If your entire goal, if someone's like, don't lock your key, in your car anymore. That's it. That's all you have to do. And then you do it twice,

but then the third time you don't lock your keys in your car. Nobody has to say, great job for that. It's a very low bar. So he drafts Bryce Petty, who everyone knew was a joke. People were laughing. It was the fourth round, though, to be clear. I understand that. I mean like... So I understand that. What I'm saying is Bryce Petty was a joke of a pick. People were laughing at the Bryce Petty pick. That's a wasted fourth round pick. And by the way, by the way, mid-round picks, complete disaster under McCagin. So then in 2016, he drafts with the 51st overall pick.

In a draft that had a lot, a lot of good second rounders, he drafts Christian Hakenberg. Okay. The Christian Hakenberg pick, and I made this point in the story, for me was disqualifying. If you take that, if you're the type of guy who drafts Christian Hakenberg in the second round, I don't think you deserve to be one of the 32 NFL GMs. I think that they should have wrestled control. If someone was going to win a power struggle, it should have been between the 51st and 52nd picks

of the 2016 NFL draft, okay? That's when the move should have been made. And beyond that, it was just horrendous drafting. So Mike McHidon was a bad GM, but the entire Jets plan is flawed. And the way I look at it is they have created a mess by solving a previous mess. And that seems to be the Jets' way at this point.

I understand the rationale. By the way, the pick after Christian Hakenberg was Deion Jones. Oh, yeah. That draft had a lot of good mid-round value. Yonikin Gokwe is like about a dozen picks later. Yeah, it's not great. Cody Whitehaer, Kevin Byrd.

They're also looking for a center right now, which is, again, all this stuff is really enjoyable. I understand the argument that you don't want to bringing a new scouting staff in January, how tough that is. The same reason that the Raiders kept their whole scouting staff on while Mac was there. You got to keep that continuity from all those great drafts in the past. Exactly, right? You want to keep that momentum going.

But if you just want to keep the guy through the draft and you know you're not that tied to him, why would you possibly let him open the purse strings and spend $140 million guaranteed in free agency and not have the coach who just got there be an active part in those decisions? This was not one draft is important. One draft can shape your franchise for a while. But in my opinion, the damage that's done with the money they just handed out to guys like Levyon Bell, to guys like C.J. Mosley, even if you like them as players, these are decisions that financially are going to shape your team over what is it more or less the entirety of the cheap years of Sam Darnold's contract. The Jets are in the midst with a promising young quarterback of arguably the most important three years

stretch they're going to have while Sam Darnold is their quarterback. And they just let a guy shape their roster without much financial wiggle room that they just fired. None of the, the steps of it make no sense to me no matter how you cut them. Even if you think you want to keep them through the draft, why don't you sit there and say, all right, let's be cautious. As ownership, you have to sign off on all this stuff. It just seems like a complete lack of understanding and a complete lack of foresight by the people that are ultimately making the decisions. Well, that checks out from everything we've known over the past, at least five or six years from the Jets. But I think if you're the Jets, right, if you're Jets fans and we know many of them,

there's what happened last year and you're watching Darnold play and you're thinking, God, maybe this is just return in the corner a tiny bit. Maybe this is the time where it starts to become real, where we're not a just total punchline. And then to follow that, that season up, and especially the end of that season with this, that is just so demoralizing. I mean, you really thought, okay, maybe we got a shot with this guy under center and you just did everything you possibly could to fuck it up. It's not what you want. It's miserable.

I mean, it's absolutely miserable. And I know that it seems like we might be overreacting to this, but I really don't think we are. I mean, it's to give that sort of autonomy to someone that you're not committed to, it is just so baffling to me. You know, one of the things, and Michael Lombardi said it a lot, and a lot of people around the Patriots have said it in the past, but one of the great gifts the Patriots have gotten, one of them is Tom Brady,

not wanting market value for his contract. The other one is playing in a division with a lot of hapless teams who have no idea what they're doing. The AFC East is theirs forever. But here's the thing about that. And I totally agree. that's how it's been for the last decade, for the most part. But now in Buffalo and Miami,

I think you have two teams that I don't mind. I don't mind what they're doing. Yeah, but they're not ready to compete this year. Of course not. They're definitely not ready to compete. I think that Buffalo is on their way. And we've talked about them a lot. I think that both of us believe that Brandon Bean is a smart person.

We like Sean McDermott. I think that everything they've done this offseason, I've been like, okay, I understand this. I get where they're trying to do. It's very hard to wade into free agency and do so in a manner that's not reckless. And they did that. And I was impressed by their ability to kind of split that difference. Miami, we've talked about this a bunch.

If you're going to do it, do it all the way. And that's exactly what they've done this spring. So it just seems like the rest of the division is kind of understanding. All right, this is maybe these are the types of decisions we should make in the way the NFL currently works. And the Jets just are not in that conversation whatsoever. So here's my question to you, Robert Mays. the Jets are in a weird spot because they're not tearing it down.

They're not Miami, they're not Buffalo, they're not starting from scratch. They went out and they spent a lot of money. Levy on Bell is a win now type of player. C.J. Mosley is a win now type of player. Jamal Adams. They have some, you know, Trumane Johnson, say what you will about him. It's not a contract you want on your books,

but he exists and he's a veteran. They're not in a total tear down. So my question to you, James and Crowder, is a decent player. my question to you is how many games do the Jets win in 2019? Six, seven? Yeah. Is that too many?

No. I think they have a chance at 8 and 8. But if you spend $150 million in free agency, you're going to want more than 8 and 8. It's just, I think this is colored. If you had asked me this two weeks ago, even though nothing had changed about who was in charge, I still probably would have felt better about it. But again, the dysfunction that it seems like is creeping in there again, it just gives me pause about them.

Maybe that's unreasonable. Again, I understand the logic is probably off because I would have said something different two weeks ago if you would ask me. But again, it's just so hard to feel good about where they're going when you see where they've been for the last two weeks. Hey, can I make one more point about the Jets? I want to talk about this Peter Schrager thing. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. So I don't think Peter Schrager is running the GM search for the Jets.

You don't. I do not think that. Call out an educated, educated opinion. I do want to say, however, that even if he was, which is not. I do think journalists, I think that journalists play an important role a lot of times in these searches

and they get called more than maybe you think. And I actually think that's a smart strategy because I think a lot of times teams get so, there's a lot of people in the NFL who don't know people outside their own building. And if they do, it's because they used to work with them. And I think the NFL is such a siloed environment that a lot of times you'd be surprised at

the fact that journalists are the connections between guys in different buildings. And so if you're hiring somebody from the outside to be a GM, to be a top personnel guy, whatever it is, a lot of times it is journalists who either make those connections, make the recommendations, and a lot of smart teams,

a lot of smart teams, reach out and have conversations with those people. So what I'm saying is that even though Peter Schrager, I don't think it's involved in this thing, I think that was the whole reaction to that was weird because journalists, again, are a sounding board all the time. And, you know, if they were

running a GM search, that's a little bit different, but I don't think that's the case, and I don't think it ever is the case, but I do think that they have a little more influence on these things than we think. And I think that's a decent thing. I'm totally with you. I'm not saying that as a journalist who wants a GM to call me or an order to call me and ask my opinion, but just the way it was framed, I didn't understand the backlash to it. It's like, well, yeah, if somebody picked up the phone and asked him, who cares? I mean, he's been doing this for a while. It makes sense to me. I said this on a couple of shows around December.

I wrote a analytic story in December, talked to a lot of folks for it, got a lay-a-the-land on analytics stuff, and I got called from multiple teams just wanting to pick my brain about, hey, how do we go forward? How do we use this stuff? Where would you look if you were hiring somebody,

that sort of thing? I wasn't evolved enough to make specific recommendations. I'm not going to lead anybody's search firm here. but you know, you talk to enough people and you can give advice. It's not, that doesn't make them stupid. It makes them, makes them the type of person that looks under every rock. If you, I'm not going to put you on the spot, but if you were thinking about where they should go, do you have anybody in mind that you think would be, I know Joe Douglas's name has been thrown out there from the Eagles?

Joe Douglas. I mean, I think that I kind of liked the idea of a Joe Douglas Daniel Jeremiah partnership. Maybe you saw that floated around there. I guess they're quite close. But I've really been impressed with Joe Douglas in the work that he's done. That Eagles front office is awesome. I don't think you can go wrong there.

So if that's where they want to do, I mean, from Joe Douglas's perspective, if you're, let's say Joe Douglas is the top lieutenant on the board for 2020 for hiring. Why would you jump at the Jets job right now? That's a good question. Your predecessor just spent $150 million. he just drafted all these guys.

He committed a lot of money to a running back and then a off-ball linebacker. So if you're Joe Douglas, why wouldn't you just roll the dice that Philly's going to be really good this year and you're going to get your pick of jobs eight months from now? Yeah. I mean, this is a job where you're locked into so much,

which is kind of what I was alluding to earlier. And I think that's the problem with it. Again, looking at Joe Douglas, looking at people that have had a hand in successful organizations, I don't think is the worst way to do this. You know, I don't understand why a team

wouldn't just go to Nick Casario at this point and be like, come run our team. Yeah, but they've tried. They've tried. The Dolphins have tried. I would keep doing it. I mean,

these are the places that I would look because these are the people who know what it takes to be successful in those jobs. If you're Nick Casario, you don't have to jump at these and why would you jump at the Jets job when something else may be better down the line.

You're waiting for the perfect gig or the right one. And I'm sure Joe Douglas is, in the same boat. So yeah, it's going to be hard to lure the best candidate because it's not an attractive job. You have your quarterback. That's the most attractive part. But you really are locked into someone else's roster. And that's why I just don't understand anything the Jets have done in the past couple. There's also a real hesitance in the NFL to give a GM a second opportunity. That is not like, because the work isn't as public as coaching, it's not, you know, if Jack Del Rio were a

GM instead of a coach, he would not have been able to rehab his image and then get another job later in his career, right? If you flame out as a GM, you're typically not going to get another job. So picking the spot is 95% of it. You know, Mike Tannenbaum got a second job because, you know, he did say what you will. He did build two AFC championship caliber teams. They didn't get there. They didn't get the Super Bowl, but, you know, he did some good things. But the vast majority of GMs are are one-shot guys, and you don't want to be the guy who picked the wrong spot

because someone like Mike McCagden, I would say has very, very little chance of reappearing. I mean, think about it, but even like Jeff Ireland. Jeff Ireland is a guy who failed in Miami quite harshly, and he has rehabbed his image

in New Orleans, but I'm not really hearing. Even though I've heard so much about how much he's crushing the draft right now, I've not heard his name come up in, in in GM conversations the last year or so. Have you?

No, I haven't really. That's not a name that's been thrown around. If he was an offensive coordinator and the exact same narrative had happened, he would be he'd have a job. I think that's where a lot of those guys wind up. You just become this kind of shadow GM that's the number two or a highly

influential advisor on one of these teams. That happens a ton. And I just assume that that's probably what will happen. Sometimes they like that. Sometimes they like that. Exactly. I remember having a conversation with someone a couple years ago. I actually think it was in Miami.

And they were talking about how, about the position coaches. And I was like, you know, what's the difference between a position coach, you know, sort of mindset-wise and a coordinator? He said the coordinators, a lot of times the difference between those two things is just ambition. And a lot of people in the league are extremely happy being a defensive backs coach or being a tight ends coach and making nice six-figure comfortable jobs, your head's never on the chopping block unless the head coach goes. Even then, sometimes you get carried over into the next staff.

You're known as a good technician or whatever. So it's a pretty comfortable life. And a lot of those guys, if you are Jeff Ireland, I'm not saying, I've never, I haven't, I don't think I ever met Jeff Ireland. But, you know, he's got a pretty sweet right now. Why would you go and try to get a Jets job? You know, I just think that there's, there's some comfort if you fail in a big spot at knowing that maybe you have a role that's better suited for you.

And that's like Pete Carmichael in New Orleans right now. Pete Carmichael's been there for a decade. He gets to coach Drew Breeze every year. He's the offensive coordinator. I'm sure he makes really nice money. New Orleans is a great city. I think he was 35 or 36 when he got there. If he has kids,

they've probably grown up there. It's like, why do I need to be the one in these press conferences dodging all these questions? It's a nice little life. The person I'm talking to about this couple years ago, they're like, you know, the other thing about being coordinator is like it's so public.

It's like your kids get dragged at school if you score 10 points. You know what I mean? It's just not, it's kind of a stressful job. So I can see, I can see why some guys just want to sort of take it easy in their careers. And that's what I'm saying. If you've even compared to coordinator compared to head coach, think about how much worse that is. I mean, that's a whole different step. So I get it.

I absolutely get it. We just made a long argument for never taking a big job in football. That's right. Hey, you know what? If you rise to a certain point and you're enjoying yourself, just hang out there, man. Have a good time. Life's too short. All right.

let's talk about Tomic and Sue and Gerald McCoy obviously, but you guys have missed it. Joe McCoy released by the bucks this week saves them $13 million against the cap. Sue signs for one year, $9.25 million with a chance to make $10,

saves the bucks $3 million. They were weirdly more up against the cap than any other team in the NFL, which is impossible to believe, considering the roster. Love to be a mediocre team against the cap. God, that would have messed up there. What a great spot to be in in 2019.

Caped out and bad. Talking about, you know, 30-year-old defensive tackles switching jobs, isn't that interesting. I don't really understand this move if you're Tampa Bay. I think that you're so cash-strapped, the idea of maybe upgrading, maybe just making a lateral move and only saving $3 million bucks is weird to me, especially considering just, again, how many holes you have elsewhere. So that's fine. But I wanted to talk about kind of more big picture, that draft.

I wrote about this today. And I just think that draft is a fascinating case study in a lot of different ways because we're nine years removed. And I think that distance allows us to look at that draft from this big picture perspective because it was the last draft before the new CBA came into play. So a lot of the contracts that those guys got had really negative impacts on the team. A lot of rich people. A lot of rich people from that draft.

Another thing is I feel like those guys have been in the news all spring. Think about the guys from that draft we've talked a lot about. Sue McCoy, Earl Thomas, Cam Chancellor, Rob Grankowski, Antonio Brown, they're moving on. They're at the end of their first stage, no matter how well that first stage went. And I just think it's a really cool middle ground of us realizing where veterans and the value of high-price veterans is compared to younger players and how long those guys have built their resumes.

So when you're thinking about that class and everything else, what do you think about in terms of what it taught you about the league? Yeah, so I think it's the last draft before everything changed, before everything we know about team building was turned on its head. I was actually having a discussion the other day with someone about this about how football has become a sport where the CBA is a competitive document. You know, obviously there's a lot of salary quirks in the NBA and bird rights and all that stuff, and baseball is what it is.

But it doesn't change so dramatically with every CBA. When the CBA is rewritten in two years, whatever it is, that is going to change the way teams are built. People are talking about the comp picks and how comp picks might change because teams are relying on them too heavily. The rookie wage cap might change a little bit. How much teams practice in the offseason might change a little bit.

And that is going to tangibly change the way teams operate and the way teams draft. I don't think there was any other team sport like that. The 2010 draft to me is really interesting. I think that it's not a surprise that they're in sort of a transitional phase because you just think about the way NFL contracts work. These guys were with their teams for five years and they get another deal and then they're kind of floating around. And Domic and Sue is on his third team in three years because his second contract ended before it was supposed to expire when he got released by the dolphins. and at the point he was the biggest defensive salary of all time.

And so the 2010 draft, this is the time where guys are either going to have the second or third stage of their career and add four more years and push for the Hall of Fame or they're going to wash out. It hurts me to see some of these guys who are maybe not getting jobs. Eric Berry is one of them. And then there's something, you know, what happens to Earl Thomas here? This is either going to be the beginning of something really new and exciting for Earl Thomas, or it's the end. And that's sort of the nature of year nine for an NFL player. Yeah, it's the 2009 draft, I think, could have been this last year.

Because I'd say that over the last two years is when we really started to realize the importance of going younger and cheaper. So you have guys that are older that are going to be fizzling out a little bit. But the 08 and 09 drafts didn't really have the sorts of players that it stuck around long enough to realize that world. I mean, you think about the first round of the 2008 draft, you guys like Glenn Dorsey, Vernon Goldston, Cedric Ellis, Derek Harvey, Keith Rivers, Leotis Macelvin.

I mean, it was really not a good draft. The 2009 draft was the same way. This 2010 draft is really the first time where we're firmly in this reality of team building. And you have teams having to make really difficult decisions on guys like Rob Grancowski. They almost traded him last year. Antonio Brown, I understand there's a whatever, personality aspect of all of this. If Antonio Brown was five years younger and $15 million cheaper, he's not going for a third and a fifth.

I can tell you that right now. And a team is more apt to say, we'll hang on to him. It mean, Earl Thomas, uncerimoniously, gets just let go by the Seahawks. They just watch him walk away to the point where he's giving them the bird while coming off the field for the last time. He's a legend for that franchise. Geno Adkins' fourth round, Cam Chancellor, fifth round, two different guys. Gino signs his extension last year.

He's set in Cincinnati. Cam Chancellor was done. was released last week. It's over for him. I find that draft, one of the other reasons I was really interested by it when I was going back, this is a slightly different topic, though, was, I wrote about this. It's such a window into how much situation matters. Because think about how many guys in that draft had to wait for a different staff or a different team or just different circumstances to succeed. I wrote about Brandon Graham.

Brandon Graham on our Grant One podcast way back when, we would just sit there and try to trade him to every team in the league that ran a four or three because we thought Brandon Graham was so good. And it just never came to fruition because of how he was used and how much he got to play. I mean, when Jim Schwartz got there in 2016, it was the seventh year of Brandon Graham's career. And it was the first time he was ever like a star, which is so crazy to think about. And guys like Jerry Hughes, who busted out in Indy, and he goes to Buffalo, has an excellent few years. He just gets another contract. And there's so many guys like that.

And Golden Tate is another great example. I mean, think about what he was in Seattle and then he goes to Detroit. There's so many guys in that draft. Emmanuel Sanders is another one. I'd even write about him. He becomes a completely different player in Denver. I just think there's so many different lessons to be learned from what that slate of players did. And I think it's just been so cool they've been in the news these last couple of months to remind us all of them.

All right. This is the last thing before we get to our guest. You redraft 2010. Knowing what we know now, what does it look like? I think Sue goes number one still. Okay. Like even like do we, is it just, is there anything? Sue didn't go number one then.

No. So Sam Bradford went number one. But if, is it like, is there some of the information we knew then or it's just everything we know now? That's all that matters is what we know right now. Well, everything, we know everything. We remember obviously Sue's Nebraska career as part of the narrative, but it's. Okay. All right.

That's what I'm asking. It's not just who they were as NFL players. You have to take into account some of the information we do back back back. I think it's probably Sue, but I think there's a lot of freaking good players here. A lot. I mean, Earl Thomas would obviously be a top five. Antonio Brown. Top five pick.

Antonio Brown, Cam Chancellor, even Gino Adkins. I mean, Gino Atkins, Christ, who's been more valuable than him? He really good. I think Antonio Brown, you can make the case for Antonio Brown. I just think that Sue is so dominant that it's one of those things like you just take him and don't think about it. I mean, I think he should have been the number one pick then anyway. Sue Antonio Brown, I think Earl Thomas is in the conversation. Rob Gruncowski, obviously.

Marquis Pouncey is just a fantastic player in that draft. Why did the Bears not have a pick till 75? What's going on here? Is it Jay Cutler? This would be the Jay Cutler trade, baby. Oh, boy. Yep. Yep, I trust me.

I know it well. They could have gotten there are some good players on the board. There were some very good players in the 2010 draft. Could have gotten Earl Thomas, JPP, Demarius Thomas, Des. Brian, Devin McCordy. Ooh, boy. This draft happened several months after Jay Cutler through like 25 interceptions.

Carlos Dunlap would be a top 15 pick in the redraft. It was a really good draft for a few different teams. Sean Lee. Seahawks crushed it. The Steelers absolutely crushed it. The Patriots crushed it because they got Devin McCordy and Grancowski. And the Bengals did a great job to get Dunlap and Gino-Ackins, two guys that are still on the team is incredibly impressive.

Navar Bowman and Jimmy Graham, Everson Griffin, within nine picks of each other. Alta and Burner, four picks later. That's a nice draft. It was great. I mean, Golden Tate was a second round pick. Is this just a rewatchable? It's a 2010 draft?

That's what we've entered into. Trust me, that's totally fine with me. I'd go back and do that whenever you wanted to. I also think that I also, just judging by, and we've had this, like, when we did the Seattle of San Francisco thing, recent nostalgia is just a sweet spot for our listeners. It plays, baby, because it's my favorite thing, too. If we did like Steve Young right now, if we did a Steve Young show, it just wouldn't, I mean, like, there's enough of that in the NFL network.

But no one's doing 2010, baby. We know our demographic. Because it's us. It's us. It's us. It's a total sense. Yes. All right.

All right. Before we get deep down this rabbit hole, let's bring on our guest. Okay. We're joined now by, I think, one of the smartest people on NFL Twitter. And NFL Twitter is full of very, very smart football minds, but it's Jason, It's Gerald, founder of over thecap.com. Jason, how you doing? I'm pretty good.

Great, great. So we're excited to have you because I think that the salary cap and how it affects just the way teams build now, I think that that's a real fascination because we were talking earlier about the 2010 draft versus the 2011 draft and how much everything changed once the rookie wage scale came in. And I think you really can't overemphasize it enough. But Jason, when you're looking right now at the way teams build with salary cap in 2019, Is there anything that we're missing that really smart teams are doing that's maybe going under the radar right now? I don't know so much about under the radar.

I think that probably has a little bit more to do with kind of targeting certain kind of veteran players that are lower cost. I think that is one of those areas that certain teams are able to exploit while other teams focus on some of the real high-priced talent that's available in free agency. but beyond that, I don't think you see too many, you know, real novel things anymore when it comes to contracts. I mean, San Francisco did something kind of unique with Jimmy Garoppolo last year with the way they tried to structure his contract. And every now and then you'll see some things like that. But I think for the most part, it's just when you look at the way teams target kind of second and third tier free agents to try and build their teams on lower cost, shorter term deals, they usually, I think, are working out a little bit better than some of the other teams that go for the real big name Tier 1 free agent talent. Is that New England and Philadelphia in teams like that?

Yeah, those are the teams that kind of do that. You know, you see, and both of them both do something very similar in that they'll let a player leave their organization, go sign somewhere else, make money for a year, and then you'll notice a lot of times they end up coming back. you know, they'll make a play for them when it's, you know, a third of the cost or something along those lines. And they're familiar with those players. Those players are familiar with the system. And usually that means that they're going to get

a pretty good return on the investment when they target those types of players. Vinnie Curry, Deshawn Jackson, like the Eagles did it like three times in the last year. They love doing that. It's one of their favorite things. Yep. Yeah.

I think that the way, the most pressing issue, pretty much with every team at this point is how much they pay their quarterback. And we're going to get into some of the bigger quarterback contracts in the NFL in a second here. But the Dak Prescott rumor,

Robert wrote about this last week, is that he might be looking at $30 million. And you start looking around and, okay, Marri Cooper is going to command a huge contract. I guess they're going to pay Zeke Elliott. Someone like Byron Jones is due for big money. Is there any path or to ask it another way,

what is the path to the Cowboys contending if they're paying DAC $30 million a year? Well, I would say that paying him $30 million is probably accurate. I can't imagine that he's going to sign for less than that. It's just the way the quarterback position works.

The way the position is gone is just one guy signs and next guy makes a little bit more. The next guy makes a little bit more than that. So you do have a couple guys that'll top the market right now. It's Russell Wilson at $35 million. So Prescott's probably going to be there right around $30 million,

give or take a little bit. So I think the Cowboys already have to know that. So I think you just kind of bake that into the details and you say, all right, how do we work around this? And I think in the Cowboys case, you have a couple of possibilities of things they could do. It depends on how creative they want to get. But I think if it was me doing it, I think what you want to do is you want to look at a current contract, which is someone like a Derek Carr. you look at someone like that and you look at what's a kind of team-friendly vesting schedule on the guaranteed aspect of the contract and you don't give a big signing bonus.

And what you want to do is you want to leave yourself the flexibility to do things with his contract down the line if he outperforms it or you want to have that ability to walk away from him if he really doesn't live up to those dollars and cents. And I think if you structure it in that kind of way to where you don't feel, boxed into a corner. You know, the way the dolphins were with Ryan Tannahill, for example, you know, they just kept going with big bonuses, big bonuses, big bonuses, and you kind of get boxed in on a player. I think you do that, and then you can kind of work with those other contracts that are there

because you know if something better comes along at a lower price that you can move away from Prescott. So I think that's probably the most reasonable angle for them to approach it. I think if they go in there and they do a traditional, you know, $30 million deal with a, you know, $60 million essentially in full guarantees, you know, $35 million signing bonus, something like that, then you probably are going to start to run into trouble down the line with, you know, what do you do with all these other players? Especially if you sign Prescott this summer, he goes out and has kind of a mediocre year. Now you really start thinking, you know, do we want to? to spend that money on Amari Cooper? Do we want to spend the money on the cornerback? You know, now we're not certain anymore on the quarterback after we gave him this money.

We have to fill those positions now with lower cost players. So I think that's probably the way they should approach it. I mean, there's some other unique things teams could try. I think it would be interesting as a team ever offered a player like a Prescott to try and get them under contract for, say, $20 million a year, $22 million a year, and you guaranteed the entire contract for four or five years. Yeah, that locks you in. but if your other option, if he blows up, is basically going to be,

you're going to go in the draft, right? Number one draft pick is going to cost you less than $9, $10 million a year. So you can have a guy like Prescott, even if it turns out he's going to be riding the bench by doing that. But if he happens to play well, well, you know, you've got yourself a pretty good bargain at quarterback. I don't think any team has really approached it like that yet, but I think that would be kind of unique if a team tried that.

So with the idea of kind of having those, the vesting schedule and really giving yourself, and out is the downside for the quarterback essentially that if you really do screw it up in the first two years you're done. Because I'm looking at the car contract and it feels like he was going to get to, if he got to the third year, he was going to get most of those guarantees because his base salary became guaranteed on like the sixth of February of something this year. So is it really just getting to that third year if you structure like that and betting in yourself to do that? Is that what you're doing as a quarterback if you take that sort of deal? I think that there are certain quarterbacks that would take that deal.

I think, you know, some of the quarterbacks have gotten incredibly favorable vesting schedules where, you know, you'll see, for example, you know, a player like a Matt Ryan caliber player, you know, probably this past February, you know, his salary guaranteed, not just for this year, but for the following year. You want to, you know, you definitely, if you're a team, you want to stay away from that. I think if you have a question mark quarterback. But yeah, teams would definitely do the Russell Wilson style deal or whatever that is to where, you know, you get that testing year by year, not those future bests. I think certain players like a Prescott would probably go for that.

Jason, you know, I think that the Russell Wilson contract was interesting because it was the second straight off season, Rogers being the first last year, where we talked so much about a sort of a non-traditional deal. and are, you know, is there going to be opt-outs like the NBA or is it going to be tied to percentage of the salary cap? Is having seen two quarterbacks with basically as much leverage as you can get short of pure free agency, strike out at getting that, are we ever going to see a quarterback actually move the market

or is it always going to be the sort of incremental thing? No, I think it's always going to be the same kind of stuff. The closest that you're going to see to that is the Kirk Cousins deal, which is, you know, the short-term deal. Which nobody's following. this point. So, somebody could. You know, if somebody gets to free agency again, someone could follow that. You know, you have to be willing to take the shorter term deal as well.

But other than that, I just don't see it. You know, part of the issue is that the salaries are so high for a quarterback, you know, and we say, yeah, you know, guy like a Patrick Mahomes, for example, when he's going to get his extension. Now, that guy should be worth $40, $45 million relative to, you know, other players in the league who are going to be above $30 million at that point in time. but the money is so high, and the quarterback is, it's that one position, that one player that seems to get so intertwined, I think, with the community, with the team, with the franchise, you know, the face of the franchise from day one, I think they have a hard time kind of walking away

and playing that leverage game as well. You know, Cousins was different. You know, that was a mid-round pick. He wasn't really anointed from day one. Didn't really have incredible success in Washington. And he's a good enough player, but it's not like they won a Super Bowl or went deep into the playoffs or anything. But you look at someone like a Drew Breeze, for example. And, you know, Drew, Drew Breeze is, he is basically New Orleans.

And he had a lot of leverage. And he put leverage in his contract with no franchise tags and everything else. But when push came to shove, he signed for a pretty moderate number that, you know, it's not as low as what Brady signs for. But it's not far off from that in terms of giving a deal. discount and everything else. And I think the quarterbacks just want to win so much. And they're just so into those, into the team itself that I think it's hard for them to really go out there and push it the way that some of us in theory think they should.

It's so interesting that you say that because I think of it from the other direction. And I've been thinking about that from the Dak Prescott side of things when Jared Goff comes up when an organization has tied itself to these guys. We kind of want to talk about just the pragmatic element of, we'll just move on, go get the rookie, because it just makes more sense from a financial standpoint, resources, everything else. But I think it's really hard for these teams to just say, we're going to give up on this guy when you've spent three or four or five years investing everything into him. So do you think we're going to see one of these guys in the next couple years that's this highly drafted,

highly invested in franchise quarterback, just a team move on from them and say, we're going to go young again because we think it's the smart path? That's a good question, and that's a really good point because I think that's accurate as well. You know, it doesn't look good for a general manager and, you know, they're looking to preserve their own jobs. You know, it doesn't look good for them to just bail on a player that they drafted and you invest all this time. And, you know, it's not the money is not what it used to be for the rookies. But, you know, it's still a lot of money in those players. You know, you look at Jacksonville, you know, extending their quarterback two years ago, which made no sense whatsoever.

But, you know, they went and did that. I think Winston and Marriota are going to be really good test cases for that. But I would imagine that, yeah, those teams will probably look on the bright side of things and extend those players to pretty lucrative contracts, assuming that nothing goes incredibly wrong this year for either of those two guys. But it is. It's difficult, unless those players completely flop, it's really hard for someone to move away from them.

And I think that bias that happens, it causes teams really to miss out on players sometimes. You know, even if you have a guy that hasn't proven anything, the Jets with Christian Hackenberg a couple years ago, second round draft pick, you know, them going into the draft with, you know, Watson and Mahomes and not really making quarterback a priority because they had this guy on the roster that they still had hopes for. So, yeah, I think that's something that definitely happens. And, you know, for the gossip of the world and those players, yeah, I don't think teams will walk away from them, even though they probably should, you know, and start over, they probably will not. You're a Jets fan, Jason.

I hate to bring that up, but you are a Jets fan. I just brought up Hakenberg. Yeah, no, I know. That was the same. It's also been really fun to watch you kind of deal with your pain in a public forum on a month, over the last week or so. You've been talking through it the way I really respect.

Yeah, it's okay. You're amongst friends here. It's fine. You can talk about your pain. But they spend $150 million. They give a lot of money to a running back. They give a lot of money to C.J. Mosley, who plays almost as an unvaliable position as running back.

My question now is when you look at the Jets roster, you look what McCagdon is given to, I guess, emperor or Gase at this point. Is there any path? forward. Is there any, is the way their cap is structured with Darnold and some of the talent around there? Is that team built in any coherent way or is it the disaster that I think outsiders are pegging it as, including both of us? You know, for the most part, the Jets have basically been a dartboard for the last couple

of years. You know, it's just a couple guys. It seems like throwing darts and just picking certain players just because they're available and putting them on the team. I, didn't understand some of the signings. You know, you look at the receivers. They just paid Quincy and Juan Juan, $9 million or whatever it was. And, you know, then they go out and free agency and you sign another receiver that really is, I don't think they're going to compliment one another, but you sign him for $9 million as well, $9.3, something like that for Crowder.

And then you've got Robbie Anderson is pretty good. You know, on the outside, and he's going to look for big money, too. If you paid those guys $9 million, what are you going to pay Anderson? You know, the Jets, the salary cap's not terrible. They still have some flexibility that's in there to spend. You know, they'll be middle of the road. They're not capped out. It's not like the bears who kind of cap themselves out with a lot of the moves that they did.

Part of the reason is the Jets drafts have been so bad. They haven't had any players really worth extending. So it is a silver lining and everything. Yeah, yeah. So that's the one benefit of drafting poorly is you don't have to pay those players. But, you know, it's just like they have a lot of players. certain positions. And I think what you said is accurate, you know, that they went into free

agency and they spent a bunch of money on really what are replacement level positions. I mean, you should be able to find an inside linebacker in the draft. You shouldn't have to spend, you certainly should never have to spend $17 million, you know,

for someone like Mosley. Now that they have the leeway to do that because they have the rookie quarterback, so you can take some gambles like that on a player. But in terms of what they're building there. I have no clue. I don't really have a lot of high hooks

unless the quarterback is just, he's got to be tremendous. You know, if he's great, that makes up for everything else. But I don't see it, I certainly don't see it as a desirable job for anyone to come in because even though you do still have some cap space,

you know, you just spent big money, ownership spent big money on certain players that were all signed in the last year or two. You know, the true main Johnsons of the world and all that, you're not going to be able to come in and just cut those players next year. So really, you're a general manager.

You've got McCagman's team this year. You pretty much are going to have McCagman's team next year, and then you can start to do something on your own. And with ownership kind of up in the air, you know, who knows if Woody's going to be back? Who knows if he was involved with this decision at all? I know supposedly he wasn't. Who knows?

It's just so much uncertainty. New CBA, all that stuff. I can't imagine it's a very desirable job. I don't think it's been a desirable job for a while, which is how they really kind of got in this trouble with, you know, starting back in 2013 with Idzik. And it's just been kind of a mess since then. So what you're saying is things are great.

Yeah, things are, you know, things are just like they used to be back in the, in the mid-90s. If you're, if you were a fan of the jets in the mid-90s, well, it's deja vu. You finally got that back again. I want to ask you one thing, Jason, in regard to that. I want to circle back to the Cowboys very briefly because you're talking about

positional value and that kind of stuff. And the Cowboys list of players. And you have Byron Jones, Amory Cooper, Lyle Collins, Jalen Smith, all these guys that they may have to extend as they're dealing with that DAC contract. With the numbers that you've kind of run, the research that you've done, have you kind of figured out a couple different positions that maybe would go against conventional wisdom or a little bit deeper than what we normally say or what we normally talk about in regards to what's worth paying.

If you were looking at those four guys, what would be your plan in terms of how you dole the money out? Well, I think, assuming that you're not worried about, you know, any type of fall off, you know, Marri Cooper played pretty well last year. Obviously, he's had its ups and downs with the Raiders. So I don't know how sold you are on him, but just in terms of a position, that's a guy that I think you prioritize because you don't find wide receivers that have that kind of talent available in free agency.

They just, they're never there. You look at the top wide receivers. It's basically all extensions. It's not really free agent contracts. I mean, your big free agent movers were, you know, guys like Sammy Walk into, made a killing in free agency, but that's not really a great one wide receiver. Amari Cooper could be. So I think he's one of the guys that you prioritize.

It's kind of hard to say on the cornerback position. I think that that's pretty valuable to have, but cornerbacks, you know, you need so many players in the secondary, and there are good players available in free agency. Even when you look at the top of the market, a lot of those players moved in free agency. Really, most of them, I think I was looking at that the other day.

I think of the top 10 or top 20, a pretty high percentage of them are players who signed in free agency. They're not players who signed extensions with their teams. So I think you could probably look at getting better volume by letting your cornerback go to free agency and using that money to sign maybe two decent corners. You know, if he's that important to the defense, you know, it's one player going to be the Derell Revis, Dion Sanders kind of player anymore. I don't really know. I wouldn't think so. So I think that's a position you can walk on.

running back, I think is definitely a position you should walk on that. That would be my lowest priority of the players. But, you know, where you talked before about players being invested in a quarterback, I think Dallas is also incredibly invested in Ezekiel Elliott. You know, they picked him so high in the draft. They clearly went to bat for him in all the suspension stuff that happened a couple years ago. They would like to make him a focal point of the offense. I know they walked away from DeMarco Murray.

but I don't see that for them. I think other teams would kind of push that as a low priority, but I think for Dallas, he'll probably make him, if not the top priority behind Prescott, right behind Cooper. Isn't that the crux of this conversation? Is that there are smart ways to build around a guy

making $30 million a year, but as soon as you make one of the dumb moves, that's where you're really screwed. You can do this, but paying your running back after doing it is not the right choice. I think that's the problem with all of this. It's not you can't build a good team a $30 million quarterback, it's that when you do one or two other dumb things after paying your

quarterback, that's where you're in really serious trouble. Yeah, well, that's the thing. We talk about the Jets with some of those contracts they did. When you have a quarterback making $8 million, you can do some stupid stuff that doesn't work out, and it doesn't really hurt you. When you have that one quarterback, that one player making a ton of money, you don't really have that margin for error anymore. So if you go out there and you sign Ezekiel Elliott for for example to the, you know, a contract like Todd Gurley, $14, $15 million a year, whatever that is, you're in a really bad position when you do that

because you're now paying so much more relative to the rest of the league. And that's a position that often just kind of falls off a cliff. And, you know, if overnight, Ezekiel Elliott just doesn't really do anything, you know, starts to get injured. You know, Defonse Freeman in Atlanta, you know, since signing, he's basically just been on and off the field all the time. He's just been banged up. You know, if that happens, that puts you in a real crunch. Now, Dallas, just one thing that Dallas has done that's been pretty smart has probably gone under the radar. They have not been active

in free agency. Part of that was probably cap related from the Des Bryant and Tony Romo deals a couple years ago. But even before that, they really haven't gone out there. And people always think of Dallas, I think sometimes as being a big free agent spender. They haven't done that. So in terms of money that they can spend, they're probably okay. Even once they do that deal, they're not as tight as some other teams and they probably wouldn't go out and spend that money in free agency anyway. But yeah, it definitely cuts down on your margin for error once you have that one big time player. You really should be more cautious with the other moves that you do to keep as much flexibility as possible. Jason, last question from me. I think you can reverse engineer

so many of the Super Bowl winners or the teams that compete and you say, oh, well, they had this guy on this cheap contract or this guy who was in the last year of his deal and it was an absolute bargain. There's so many of those teams. You know, Seattle, a couple years ago when you're looking at, you know, Cliff Avro, Michael Bennett, after that, you know, even the Denver team, which had a ton of bargains all over the field, I think. And the Eagles team, which had a ton of guys on one-year deals that were, you know, looking back in it now, probably severely underpaid. I think anybody was over 9% of the salary cap on that team, maybe even less. Is there a team right now that's not sort of a off-the-top-top-your-head contender for the normal fan? Is there a team right now that has a really good collection of contracts that you think could make some noise in 2019 that maybe we're not thinking about?

You know, flying under the radar, you know, I'm not sure. I mean, I think that in terms of how they're structured and the way that they've kind of approached things, the cults are probably one of those teams that stands out, I think, in that regard. But the cults are certainly not flying under the radar anywhere. you know, it's hard to really look at, you know, that I'm just trying to think of any teams that have kind of built themselves that way, those teams that you mentioned this year. And off the top of my head, nobody's really standing out, you know,

other than those usual suspects when it comes to that. But, you know, the Colts are the one team that right now probably has the best approach to everything. But after the season they had last year, you know, nobody is, nobody's going to be fooled by them or anything like that. So that's really not an under, certainly not an under the radar team. The Patriots are going to win the Super Bowl again? Is that what you're saying?

There's nobody else. There's nobody else. I think that's, I think that's what happens. You know, it's like they have, it's such an easy path or easier path, I think,

through the ASC. And I think the Patriots really do build themselves for that playoff run. You know, they know that all they've got to do really is win three games. That's what they're built for, is to win those.

three games. The ASE has been a joke for so long. They never really have competition getting to the playoffs. So, you know, it's just really just to win those couple games in the playoffs. And they've been a good job, I think, building for that. You know, and they have a lot of mismatches there. And they bring in the right talent to, you know, the Gilmore signing, which I think surprised a lot of people.

I think that was clearly done because of what happened, the one year of the Super Bowl. They realized that, you know, if they're going to match up against some teams with a real high-powered offense, not as many of them existed, at least at the time, I think, in the AFC. I think more of them were at the NFC, you know, that they went out there and got guys that were really needed for that. They certainly weren't needed to win the AFC East.

But, yeah, so, you know, the Patriots will probably, they'll certainly be around there again. Hopefully they won't win. We need someone else. But I wouldn't be surprised if they win again. You mentioning the Colts, I want to bring this full circle here before we get out. I think that it's an interesting team to throw out there because it feels like the Seahawks are trying to do now what the Colts did a couple years ago, where they tear it all down to the studs around this expensive quarterback and kind of start over and trust having that guy as your focal point and then having the resources to build your team how you'd want. Is that kind of the way you'd like to see teams with a really good expensive quarterback build where they say, okay, let's bring it all down.

let's have everything to work with and let's try to build it back up after we tear it down. Yeah, I think that's probably the right way to go about it. You know, when you have the younger quarterback, you're going to do different types of things. But when your team like the Seahawks and, you know, you've kind of been to the highest of highs and you saw things starting to go bad, the only way you're going to improve is to break it down and to find ways to be able to get younger again and to be able to, you know, fill that kind of talent. around some of those veteran players. I think New Orleans kind of did the same thing. You know, you look at the Saints,

where they jumped really from being a perennial seven-man team to being kind of a juggernaut the last two years has really been by, you know, kind of getting those big-name draft players and kind of a little on a free agency. Yeah, they were not necessarily as good at managing the cap as the cults have been the last couple years, but I get what you're talking about.

No, certainly not. sense to me. All right. Is that all we got, Kevin? I'm good here. You good, Robert? I'm all set. That was awesome. That was awesome. All right, Jason Fitzgerald, overthecap.com, follow him on Twitter. Go to his website, get his book. He is one of the smartest salary cap minds. And thank you so much for joining us, Jason. I enjoyed it. Hopefully we'll do it again. Absolutely. Thanks, Jason. Thanks, guys.