I attribute a lot of JPP’s success to the culture he joined. He clearly has talent, but I’m not so sure it would have manifested so nicely if he’d been put in a situation like Mario Williams was on the Texans. Williams was a stud and would have been great regardless of where he went. JPP? I tend to doubt it. But put in the culture of the Giants – where DL pass rushing is king – and benefiting from the tutelage of Osi and Tuck, I think that’s what really made him flourish.
Similarly, I attribute much of Osi and Tuck’s success to the tutelage of Strahan.
Yeah, I tend to agree (and would add that the ability/acquired knowledge of the coaching staff contributes a lot as well). If you have a team that always seems to find great players at a certain position, then either they’ve found the secret sauce for identifying good draft prospects, or they’re good at training up players whose skills are a good fit for the system. (Or they’re just plain lucky, which I guess we shouldn’t entirely discount, but which is no fun at all.)
Right, the main benefit to using your draft pick on a restricted FA is the relatively higher floor and lower volatility, however:
“Relatively” is the key word: plenty of free agents (or trades) don’t work out because the established player just craps out on his new team. Peerless Price in Atlanta, Andre Rison in Cleveland, Yancey Thigpen in Tennessee – respective ages of 27, 28, and 29 when they moved, so they weren’t exactly over the hill. And there are tons of less prominent players who flamed out, or good players who contributed but nonetheless underwhelmed. To say nothing of other positions.
More importantly, Mike Wallace in 2012 does not represent a unique opportunity to sign a player of his caliber to a big contract. Yes, he might be the only guy on his level this year, but if you’re patient you can have an expensive WR as good as Mike Wallace (like, possibly, Mike Wallace in 2013) in addition to your (bargain-priced) 2012 1st Round pick. Or you can use that cap space to acquire FAs at other positions, or to resign your own players, etc., and still keep your 1st Rounder. That is, Mike Wallace *might *represent the best possible use of however much cap space he’d eat up, but almost certainly not by a margin so huge that it’s worth giving up your 1st Round pick.
And this is always going to be the hurdle. Therefore, it will almost never be worth it to sign high-tendered RFAs, unless they’re willing to sign for a big discount against their true market value, or you have good reason to believe that they’re significantly undervalued by everyone else (Wes Welker?). Or, perhaps, if you have a ridiculous surplus of cap space and/or draft picks, such that diminishing returns play a big role.
I disagree. The “culture” and “tutelage” arguments are overstated. Situations matter - coaching, scheme, and players around you - but it didn’t have much to do with leading by example or winning atmosphere. Great players often leave in free agency and fail because the fit isn’t right or they previously benefited from a great situation just like some rookies never blossom because the fit isn’t right, but that’s not because someone “showed them the right way”.
You are somewhat ignoring the importance of time. Wallace, assuming he’s not merely a product of the Steelers system, would be expected step in and be a Pro Bowl caliber player right away. That high upside rookie, even if he’s a hit, will take at least a couple years to develop to Wallace’s level. The 49ers would have been much better served to send that pick to Pittsburgh than to role the dice with Moss and Manningham and the option to draft a rookie at the back end of the draft, they are trying to win right now while their defense is intact. By the time that rookie is ready to contribute on a Super Bowl level they’ll be declining as a team.
You can get Wallace right now at a high cost, but he’s comparatively low risk and pays immediate dividends. That immediacy is perhaps even more valuable than the risk mitigation. If your team is ready to go right now, like the 49ers and Patriots, the long term value of those rookies is marginalized. The opportunity cost of taking that rookie is huge.
Plus Wallace is both much more accomplished than any of your examples and he’s just 25. The difference between 25 and 28 is HUGE in the NFL, that’s 3 years of elite performance from a guy, who unlike Price and Thigpen, wasn’t a one-hit-wonder or late bloomer.
True, with Wallace you get a developed player right now, and if you’re in the “boom” part of a boom & bust cycle that could theoretically make him worth it. So, he’s not a ridiculous option for San Francisco (depending on their cap situation), though I still wouldn’t like it: over the long run, in the game of expending resources to acquire talent, the opportunity cost of this sort of move is just gallingly high. (In addition to the question of “what does he translate into if you substitute Alex Smith for Ben Roethlisberger?”) For a quintessential “steady-state” team like New England, however, he is pretty ridiculous.
(And, come one, steady-state is where you want to be. Teams that like to give up 3 chits tomorrow for 2 chits today eventually win fewer games and fewer championships than their trading partners.)
More accomplished than Price (though the two seasons prior to his breakout year do look better if you account for the crap passing offense he was on). *Arguably *more accomplished than Thigpen, though I’d say at best about the same (1300 yards, then injured, then 1400 yards, in a less robust passing environment: those are monster numbers). No way on Earth is Wallace as accomplished as '95 Andre Rison; not in terms of raw numbers, and *especially *not if you adjust for era.
You’re right that 25 is more desirable than 28, but I was speaking there about propensity to disappoint on a new team, and having only a 3 year track record doesn’t exactly help in that specific area.
(I’d also dispute that Peerless Price was a “late bloomer”: rookie year, then two good years [again, account for offense and era], then a great year. There’s nothing wrong with that schedule.)
Anyway, to reiterate: I’m not saying that 2012 Mike Wallace isn’t a better bet to succeed than '02 Price, or '98 Thigpen, or even '95 Rison. I’m saying that 2012 Mike Wallace (in a new environment, on probably a worse passing offense, taking a weighted average of the range of possible outcomes) is a worse investment than those types of free agents given that he costs you a 1st Round pick in addition to his huge contract, while those players do not.
(Well, Price was a trade, but you get my meaning.)
I’m having a real tough time getting past this comment. A 3 year track record (out of 3 in the league) is pretty much the gold standard. You don’t get any more rock solid than that without being past your prime and on the decline. If you’re dishing out a 5-year contract that’s essentially the ideal scenario. Wallace’s track record is unimpeachable.
I’ll give you that Rison’s track record was pretty excellent and might be on par with Wallace’s (I wouldn’t say better, and era is may be in Wallace’s favor when you consider Rison came from a run-and-shoot) but Wallace has none of the giant off-field and locker room red flags that Rison had.
I’m willing to accept an argument that Wallace might be a product of the Steelers system so buyer beware, but I’m not willing to accept an argument that Wallace is somehow untested or in any way comparable to Price (one hit wonder) or Thigpen (unable to sniff the field in his first 3 years).
This may not be appropriate for this thread, but I’m not sure if it deserves its own, and this is sort of a catch all for off-season NFL stuff so… is Eli Manning the greatest QB in NY Giants history? The only real competition would be Conerly and Simms. Tittle and Tarkenton were great, but not overly successful in their Giant years. My main reason for asking is evaluating the success of the draft day maneuvering in 2005.
I know it was recently that they made it a rule every team had to get at least one primetime appearance. And you can see that NFL Network definitely got stuck with some of the “get that requirement outta the way early in the season” games. Cardinals/Rams in Week 5! Bucs/Vikings in Week 8! Colts/Jaguars Week 10!
And man, I knew the Raiders would have a tough time being assigned to play the NFC South and AFC North, but jeez. Their starting sched has 0-5 written all over it.
I said somewhere that the Jets would be 7-9 this year; but they have a really easy schedule. And the Broncos have a tough one, so commence your Tebow vs. Manning watch.