Magox

The Eagles keep all their good players, they have 9 players with $17M AAV or more on the roster and 7 that they pay $20M AAV. We need to extend Rousseau, Cook, Bernard and Benford and then add a couple more blue chippers. The team can fit them all in them all, it's just a matter of will to spend in actual dollars from the owner. The Bills will have 2 players with over $20M AAV and a total of 4 with over $17M AAV. The idea that we should not extend some of our best players on the team because they aren't elite and will cost their current market value is nonsensical. Cook who arguably was the best skill position player on the Bills this past season and people want to let him walk so that they can save $2-$3MAAV because they've set this arbitrary value for him based on what I've been arguing vociferously in that people have an outdated way of looking at both the cap and the RB position and I hate to say it, recent developments are backing up my thesis. This all sounds like Giants level of stupidity over Saquon, if the Giants had offered him a few million more AAV he'd still be with them. Talk about stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. People say, "We can just draft another RB and replace him". Maybe and maybe not. Very very likely that whoever the Bills would draft would not be as good as Cook, which means that the probability that we downgrade at RB would be highly likely. Great! Just because we didn't sign someone in Cook who literally would cost around 1% of the cap in 2025, 2% of the cap in 2026 and 4% in 2027 (Which could be lowered by converting the base to salary and most likely bring it back to around 3%) is downright idiotic. Same goes for Rousseau, people have all these subjective feelings over him, "He's not a game wrecker". "I'll pay $20M AAV but not a penny more", "He's not elite". It's all nonsense. He is objectively a top 12-15 player in the league. Which means out of 64 starting DE's, he's in the top 20 - 25%. He's the best DE this team has drafted since......I can't even remember who, whoever it is it's been a while. And just because he's not elite, and we don't want to pay market value, people want to go ahead and now create ANOTHER hole in the defense? So now the Bills would need to replace 2 players at that spot. Genius!!! Others say let Rousseau play out his last year and lets take it from there. Ok, sounds reasonable on the surface, but if you don't extend him now, you miss out on saving around $10M in cap savings for 2025 which limits our options in who they can go after in FA or trade. So there is a monetary cap incentive to extend Rousseau. There is plenty enough money to extend all the players that the Bills care about and to go after more. There just is. Again, ridiculous. The Eagles have signed a RB for over $20M AAV, a guard for over $20M AAV and an off the ball LB for $17M AAV. They are doing the exact opposite of a lot of people's standard way of thinking and the reason is that they value good players and are not in the business of getting rid of them.

The Eagles have 9 guys they are paying near or over $20m AAV. We need to retain all our good players and get more

This is one of my draft man crushes. I think he's going to end up being the best or second best pass rusher this draft. He just has all the moves and produces against top competition. I'd be happy to draft him.

I’m just pointing out objective realities 😜

That’s what many don’t understand, in practical terms you are spending a very small amount of your cap on your two best skill players.

Crosby is probably somewhere around the 4th -5th best DE in football, and he gets $35.5M AAV A DE that is ranked around the 12-15 range receive probably should be in the $23M - $25M AAV

Thats the concern and a legitimate one. If he were a reliably available he would cost double probably around $15m AAV

Thats a $35.5M AAV Rousseau is objectively somewhere in the 12-15 range ranked DE in the league based on a litany of stats. About $24M AAV sounds just about right.

This is the correct way to view things!

This is the sort of moneyball approach that I'm in favor of. He probably could be signed to around $10M AAV which means he would barely eat up any cap space over the next few years. Him, Josh Palmer or Hollywood brown to me makes a lot of sense. Still draft a WR with a premium pick! Then spend a boat load on defense!

They plan on filling it up. 2027 has a $10M base salary, 2028 has an $11M and 2029 $11.25M, they can convert those salaries to a bonus and spread it out in the remaining years including the bonus.

Yeah, I'm not going to question their strategies, they are an A+ organization. Just that it does create another hole when it is clear that this was their biggest weakness.

The Khalil Shakir deal I believe is somewhat instructive in seeing how a deal with Cook could look like. This is not a post to convince anyone of whether his quality of play and value are worth what a contract could look like but how much of the cap he would tie up if he were to be signed to a similar deal as Khalil. The contract with Shakir is actually a $13.25 M AAV 4 year $53M, which makes it even better than what we were hearing due to the remaining amount not listed presumably are on performance based incentives. A deal with Cook would probably look very similar. The Sportrac link wasn't working for me, so here is another one I found https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/player/_/id/77025/khalil-shakir I think too many people focus on the AAV, it's truly not representative of what the actual cap hits are in practical terms. A better way of looking at it is the actual CAP HIT and CAP% of the league cap. If the Cook contract were to be lets say exactly the same as Cooks which as a $13.25M AAV and 1 voided year then this is what you'd expect: 2025 Cook would only have around a $3M cap hit which would be 1% of the cap 2026 Cook would have around a $6.8M cap hit which would be 2.21% of the cap 2027 Cook would have a $13.9M cap hit which would be 4.12% of the cap 2028 Cook would have a $15M cap hit which would be 4.04% of the cap 2029 Cook would have a $15.9M cap hit which would be 3.91% of the cap 2030 the VOIDED year would have a $1.8M cap hit which would be .4% of the cap The VOIDED year is essentially a somewhat empty container. That container could be used for 2027, 2028 and 2029 years to push out the base salaries that can be converted to bonuses to lower the cap hit and spread it out in the remaining years including the voided year. The base salary for 2027 is $9.9M The base salary for 2028 is $11M The base salary for 2029 is $11.2M For 2027 where the cap hit is at it's zenith at 4.12% of the cap, they could spread out the $10M salary, convert to bonus and spread it out between the remaining 3 years (which includes the voided year) and lower the cap hit for 2027 by around $7.5M, by spreading $2.5M to 2028, 2029 and 2030. Of course if you do this then the percentage of cap would be under 2% for 2027. The point is, even without any restructures which there very likely would be the maximum cap % hit would be 4.12% of the cap for a playmaking RB.

Wow! I did not see that coming. After watching the Superbowl game the takeaway was that the Chiefs needed to get better with their offensive line, this will create a hole that they need to fill. I'm guessing that the money that they will have to spend with Thuney and Trey Smith was something that they wouldn't be able to afford. The thing is that the Chiefs aren't nearly as aggressive with their salary cap maneuvers as some of the more aggressive teams. Very surprised.

Yeah, they are. I don’t think they will go down just that at some point the rate of increase will slow down. I think the Bengals and Ja’maar Chase and Tee Higgins are having that battle and from what I heard is that they are far apart with both the receivers.

One of the big problems with this is that the cap hit would be much larger in 2026 since you couldn’t do anything to manipulate the cap hit. And that this is very likely the last big contact he may be able to play for the rest of his life and risking that would definitely be seen as anti player from the players perspective. Kinda. A little bit of both.

Prior to this signing I believe that Cook could have been had for $12.5M AAV, I think now he will be around $14M - $15M AAV. They could do a $13M AAV guarantee with performance sweeteners that could take it to $16M. I do think that they will utilize him more than they did in the past and that Ty Johnson would most likely be a goner if they do decide to extend him. I think it will happen.

Thanks for finding this, it validates the point that RB valuations were out of whack. We can argue about subjectivity all day long and get no where which typically are for the people who argue with feelings, their thoughts etc. Or you can make objective arguments and look at the data, stats, metrics and trends and when you look at the numbers it's clear, RB utilization is increasing and the importance of balance is more important than it has been in over two decades, and that the best teams are largely running the ball more often than the rest of the league. I think another point of data is that we saw RB's such as Jacobs, Mixon, Saquon and Henry all leave teams that didn't want to pay the few extra bucks and all 4 teams that let them go were worse for it.

And they have both tackles making over $20M+ And they also have a guard they are paying $20M

Tee Higgins and Ja'marr Chase are represented by the same agency. I hear that Ja'marr and the Bengals are far off in their negotiations which tells me that Ja'marr is looking for $40M+ And I wouldn't be surprised that they are pushing for Tee Higgins for $33M+

Yeah, that's how it works, that is how the league evolves. Teams adjust, then teams begin to readjust then teams readjust to those readjustments and so on and so on.

People can either deny facts or accept them and the fact is that teams are running the ball a lot more than they have and the top teams are running more than the rest of the league. It was just a matter of time before the cycle would reverse.

You mean for 2026?

There is a caveat with this deal, Saquon was already signed for 2025 and 2026, so his two year extension in theory doesn’t begin until 2027 and will cover 2028. So it’s not as if his $20.6m AAV begins now in 2025. So it’s not quite as high as it appears when you factor in the anticipated rate of inflation in the cap.

You are stuck in the old way of thinking. Teams are running more than they have in a long time and almost all the top offenses are run heavy teams.