I agree with Wood Chipper: Asking for the biggest mistake leads to negativity (not that there’s anything wrong with that). The part of this post with which I agree is the call for foresight instead of hindsight. Ted Thompson and his staff have to make decisions in real time and the best criticism of those decisions happen in real time too (before their outcome is obvious). The other thing I’d like to see is when posters advocate for UFA acquisitions they reconcile the costs of those acquisitions with the roster. For example, Landry signed for $3.5M this season and Hillis for $2.8M. How would that impact extending Jennings or others they may be looking at extending even though their deals aren’t up after this season?
I’m still nervous about the depth on the OL. My guess is the acquisition of Reggie Wells signals that Lang is the backup LT until Sherrod gets healthy. Wells played LG last Thursday and IMO he’s more an OG or at most RT at this point in his career. I would have preferred they signed the best veteran (true) LT available so if Newhouse gets hurt only one position is affected instead of two. But they obviously made the cost/benefit determination Wells was the best available option. It’s not great fodder for this thread but I just don’t know enough to disagree with that; for example what was the cost of acquiring others, how would they likely affect the locker room, how close is Sherrod to coming back, and what are their expectations of his play at LT at this point?
I did like Thompson’s draft in that he was aggressive in adding defenders for Capers. And while he was aggressive in trading up twice he wasn’t foolish in doing so; he “won” those trades in terms of value given vs. value received.
BTW, Ryan Pickett counts as another significant UFA acquisition by Thompson. IMO acquiring Woodson and Pickett in one off season eclipses what Thompson has done in that regard this off season by a significant margin.
Every personnel decision has a salary cap impact question at the top of the considerations list, no doubt about it.
Someone in another thread noted a recent report that we're about $10.x mil under the cap, I can't recall the exact figure. This sounds right, give or take, though at this point it's a moving target. I had us at about $2 mil under the cap before Clifton and Collins were released and Driver was renegotiated. Offset those savings with around $800k for two of the FA vet signings taking those spots and you get to something close to $10.x mil cap space.
Lang's deal is back loaded from a cap standpoint with the bulk of the hit coming in 2014 - 2016...the net affect this year looks to be something like an additional $1 mil over his cap hit prior to signing...not a big deal...for now. The actual team cap figure can't be known until the final cut downs, and only if somebody bothers to leak it...we just don't know which higher priced or lower priced bubble guys will make the 53 man.
Jennings, taken in isolation, does not look to be a problem over the short term. According to the Press Gazette's roster link, his cap hit this season is about $7.8 mil. Assuming that figure is correct and he signs for around $10 - $11 mil per year (franchise tag is around $9.5 mil this year; DeSean Jackson's deal was for about $10 mil per), and assuming he'd get a healthy signing bonus which is prorated over the term of the contract, his 2013 cap hit may not be much more than 2012's. However, Jennings will be 30 years old next Sept...getting this deal done at "market value" may have more bumps in the road than many might imagine.
The problem comes in when you start talking about $20 mil per year for Rodgers (in line with Brees' deal if the full contract is played out), $10 mil or more for Mathews, and some smaller but sizeable chunk for Raji, all falling in a fairly small window, and adding significant cap hit additions over those players' current figures. In that light, it starts to make sense why the FAs we signed are marginal guys brought in on one year deals. These guys are stop gaps and depth additions holding places until some some younger (and/or cheaper) guys move past them on the depth chart (or come off suspension). Some of those FAs might not make it past the final cut; some might stick for a couple of years, but there's no commitment past this season.
$10 mil cap space sounds like a lot, but it will go "****" as soon as Rodgers or Matthews is re-upped. Signing a big money FA now compromises locking those guys up a year or two down the road. Unless of course one would want to fire Woodson sometime before his deal is up after 2014. At this juncture I would consider that move ill-advised.