Asomugha to the 49ers for a one year, $3M contract. I’m not sure how much he’s got left, but he’s got to be better than Culliver. The Niners have had a pretty good off-season - unusual for a Super Bowl team these days.
They also swapped a 6th and 7th rounder (so the Raiders move up about 20 spots). Still beans, but heck, I would’ve traded Carson away for a bag of the used of footballs. His contract was odious and he just doesn’t have “it.” He did end up taking a starting job with the Cards but there were too many reports that he wanted a backup job in SF or Tampa to dismiss as entirely false.
I’m not sold on Flynn or Pryor being the answer (and I hope to hell they don’t waste the #3 pick on Geno Smith), but I feel like my team is a lot better off for having gotten rid of Palmer. I liked Hue Jackson a lot, but that trade will forever be indefensible. And the Raiders will have a LOT of cap space in 2014.
Palmer threw for over 4,000 yards last season. He isn’t terrible. And he’s certainly better than what the Cards offered up last season at QB.
Have been looking into the Palmer trade and I am happy that the Cardinals did it, to be honest. As noted by FGIE, he’s better than anyone we’ve trotted out, probably since Warner retired. I was worried about his contract but it has been restructured according to reports, so all the cap hit is this year and the team are not on the hook for much at all next year - and they gave up next to nothing in draft picks for him either, so all in all it looks like good business.
Will it mean that the Cards are challenging next year? No, I don’t think so. Competence on the offensive side of the ball would be nice though (even if Palmer does throw a number of interceptions, he can’t be worse than our collective from 2012).
Presume this means that the Cards go on the O-line or for a pass rusher in the first round of the draft. Most mocks have the two leading tackles off the board by the time that they pick. I can see them going for Warmack or Jarvis Jones (though the word on him is that he doesn’t work hard enough in practice, so we’ll see what they make of him on that score). It would be ideal if Fisher or Joeckel make it to 7 though - but that doesn’t seem likely from what I am reading.
I know nothing about Culliver and I would still bet that he’s better than Asomugha is. At least better than Asomugha was with the Eagles. Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if Scrabble found he had a little something left after leaving Philly. Good luck with him. Maybe he’ll even eat lunch with the team this year.
Culliver is pretty good. He had a bad game in the Super Bowl, along with the rest of the defensive backfield.
But I don’t think the 49ers hired Asomugha to be better than Chris Culliver. I think they hired him to be better than Tremain Brock and Perrish Cox, and maybe Carlos Rogers, too. He’ll sulk on the bench if he doesn’t prove he’s ahead of those guys. (Or get cut: the contract isn’t guaranteed.)
49ers said to be working on an offer to Victor Cruz
As a Giants fan, I would be pissed if they lose Victor while letting the 49ers stockpile yet more talent. And if they’ve made him a $7 million offer, why would they let him walk over another million or so?
I’ve been reading about “dead money” in the NFL. It’s money that a team spends for players who are no longer on the team. Mostly, it’s signing bonuses or salary guarantees that get prorated over the length of the contract that come due because the player isn’t on the team. Often, it’s a good measure of how a team is doing in its personnel decisions. It is by no means a great measure of success, but I found it quite interesting.
You can see the amount each team has this year by clicking here. Some tidbits I found interesting:
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The Raiders have the most dead money in the league this year. I think we can all agree they have made some dumb ass personnel moves, and this is a good indicator of that. Richard Seymour, Darrius Heyward Bey, and Jamarcus Russell are a good chunk of it. But they also left out the 9.4 million in dead money that Carson Palmer is going to eat this year. Not good.
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The teams that suck are pretty well represented in the top 10 of this list. Jaguars, Chiefs, Raiders, Cardinals, Bills, and the Panthers are all in the top 10. The Browns come in at #12.
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I’m surprised that the Eagles aren’t higher on the list. Asamough takes a big chunk as does Jason Babin, but I expected them to be in the top 10, but they were only 17. Part of that is keeping Vick around, so we’ll see.
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The laurels thrown at the Patriots every year annoy the hell out of me, and it was nice to see them in the middle of the pack, rather than at the bottom, of the list of teams with dead money. WR seems to be the biggest problem.
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Packers have the least dead money. You knew there had to be a reason I liked this measuring stick! Their biggest hit was their biggest mistake, signing a too old, not good Jeff Saturday.
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The two Super Bowl teams are very much different. The Ravens are in the top 10 of dead money (#9) while the 49ers are second best. Baltimore is so high thanks to Ray Lewis’ and Matt Birk’s retirements, Billy Cundiff’s problems, and the Anquan Boldin trade. Meanwhile, the Niners are young and in great shape.
Jesus. Is San Fran exempt from the salary cap or something?
Is it not just a function of the fact that the new CBA reducing the cost of draftee contracts means that, if you hit with a QB from recent drafts, you’re paying them next to nothing in comparison to previous years and you can stock up on veteran talent because you’re a good way under the cap at an otherwise cap-weighty position? Seattle also seem to be assembling a decent team having hit on Russell Wilson in the draft for no money - and I would bet Washington would be trying similar things if they weren’t getting punished for the “uncapped” season.
The jump from 2 to 3 is impressive. I think once you get past the halfway point you can’t really tell much, it could be one big contract they are eating, a mistake any personnel director could make. It could be a lot of small to medium contracts, which may just indicate a change in philosophy.
The other thing the 49ers have done is sign their big money guys to loooooong contracts - Joe Staley signed a 9 year deal in 2009, and Patrick Willis has a 7 year contract that he signed in 2010. Justin Smith and Michael Crabtree were both on six year contracts too. That gives them flexibility in the short term, but they’ll be high on the dead money list in another couple of years.
It’s going to give them some trouble in 2015, I expect, when they’ll be negotiating an extension of Kaepernick’s rookie contract.
The Buccaneers managed a great dead money number by not paying anyone. Yay?
Or the Lions, and their stockpile of top-three picks, all made just before the rookie cap era.
The 49ers are interesting for this precise reason. They are in “win now” mode for the next 2 years. It will be worth seeing how it all pans out and holding knowledge like this in our heads when things get a bit more difficult in a few years time and the team has to adapt its strategy to a new cap situation that is likely to be less favourable.
FYI, the 49ers/Victor Cruz thing was an April Fools joke.
The top few on the dead money list are significant, but after that it’s all pretty close together. I mean the difference between 10th and 20th is 3 million, which is around 2.5% of the cap, so I don’t think you can infer much about management except at the extremes.
Jason Hanson just announced his retirement after 21 years of kicking for the Lions.
They offered him around $1M to come back for one more year, and he refused it.
Honestly, despite all of the records he holds and the excellent way he carries himself, I think it was time for the Lions to move on anyways. He’s been struggling to kick into the endzone on kickoffs, and that shank on Thanksgiving was just heartbreaking. It seems like he’s been missing the clutch kicks for the past couple of years.
I’d be fine bringing back Dave Rayner (MSU alum and Hanson’s fill-in when injured a couple years ago).
Huh, St. Louis’ dead money is $10.5 mil and over $10 mil of that is two guys, Jason Smith and Quintin Mikell.
I expected the Eagles to be higher on the list too just because of the timing of this particular season (otherwise I would expect the Eagles to habitually rank near the bottom third).
Interestingly enough, Vick has no part of the Eagles’ spot on this list. Had the Eagles wanted to cut him, they could have done so just after the Super Bowl without any dead money (unless he was not signed by any other team, which is unlikely). Vick signed a massive extension just before the 2011 season and could have been cut two seasons later without any dead money.
This list, and the above point, just reinforces my point that the Eagles manage their cap better than anyone else in the league. Very few teams had the foresight to take advantage of the buyer’s market during the uncapped year. Very few teams would have been able to weather a massive free agent spending spree that didn’t quite work out as well as hoped. Think of it this way: after the “Dream Team” free agent signing period, and knowing that only one of those players is still with the team (and he signed for the minimum at the time), isn’t it shocking the Eagles aren’t in the top half of the league in dead money? That comes from nearly always signing players to team friendly deals with little risk.
Another interesting note is Dallas. They’re at 16 and look fairly okay based on this list. But they have been mortgaging their future for several years now, restructuring contracts and pushing increasingly larger salaries farther back. That debt is going to be called in very soon and they’ll top this list within the next two or three years. They’re already projected to be about $20-$25 million over next season’s cap.