Yeah Clark plays in a lot of different positions. To let him walk would be nuts. Oh, and he’s 24/
28 run stops on a team that needs run stoppers. You build AROUND guys like this, you don’t let them walk.
Doesn’t fly at all. If anyone walks next year, it will be Jones. And that’s because Gluten can’t afford to pay Clark, Bahk, and Jones in the same year. So enter Dillon.
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HardRightEdge
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This much is true--he plays as much one-gap as 0-tech/two-gap in base D, maybe more, and in the 75 - 80% of snaps in nickel/dime he's off the nose, though I think you have to look pretty hard to find his 5-tech snaps.
"Nose tackle" has increasingly become an anachroistic term with the general decline in base D frequency and teams playing a variety of fronts. For the nickel/dime snaps, this is largely true all over the league for any "nose tackle" who is a 3-down player. The differentiator is how far and how often a player sets outside 3-tech, playing against the OT talents in this league which in Clark's case is not very often. The overthecap categories are more apt where 3-4 DTs (lower paid) are differentiated from 3-4 DEs (higher paid), with Clark in the former category.
What is also true is the Packers have a $175 mil in cap commitments for 2021 for 46 players compared to $180 mil for the current top 46, or $182 mil once the top 3 picks in this last draft are signed. Of course those same 2020 draftees will eat into the 2021 cap as well at higher amounts than in 2020.
The 46 players under contract for 2021 do not include unrestricted free agents Clark, Bakhtiari, Jones, J. Williams, Linsley and King, along with the lesser lights Funchess, Taylor, Lewis and Irvin. That's a lot of talent and/or snaps, depth and roles in this group with a scant $5 mil in reduced cap cost if none of those players were re-signed.
This would be problematic in what has become a routine $10 mil bump in the cap each season. The prospect for any bump remains in doubt.
Further, there are no obvious candidates at this juncture to be cut after the season for cap savings in 2021. The possibilities for some moderate cap savings are all guys who are projected 2020 starters, so those guys going out the door adds more names to be replaced in the 2020 vs. 2021 apples to oranges comparison.
Cap space currently stands at around $11 mil for the top 51. By the time the top 3 draft picks, players 52 and 53 are subtracted, and the PS is paid, that amount drops to around $6 mil less any PUP/IR replacement costs as we go along. We should still figure on picking up $4 mil in cap with Taylor's release especially now given the Day 3 draft picks, Runyan in particular. That's helpful but not exactly a game changer. From the beginning I did not think they were going to capture Linsley's $8.5 mil cap savings and that looks more to be the case now than then, especially after paying him $850,000 in roster and workout bonues. (The NFL is paying workout bonuses for "virtual workouts".)
This year, as happens with frequency, what seems like a lot of cap space at the start dwindles away in backing and filling roster holes without securing an impact player. Bulaga and Martinez represented a light FA group with their replacements were part of that back-and-fill. Next year will not be so simple.
So, when it comes to Clark, it is not a matter of "just pay the man". It's also who you don't pay in the process. Is he worth more than these guys:
https://overthecap.com/position/3-4-defensive-tackle/
That's fair. Are you going to put him in the top 10 among these guys:
https://overthecap.com/position/4-3-defensive-tackle/ plus https://overthecap.com/position/3-4-defensive-end/
That's a dubious proposition given the other moving parts. Good player, not a great player.
Maybe the plan is to part with Rodgers after this season, capture his $5 mil in cap savings, start over with the athletic Love scrambling around behind a rebuilt O-Line when he's not throwing timing passes, while running the ball a lot with Dillon and Ervin (or next year's draft pick) for change of pace. In that case go ahead and pay Clark his $15+ mil. You better not win the Super Bowl in 2020, however. It would be hard to dump Rodgers after that.
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Hey HRE, great analysis as always. 2021 is going to be a cap nightmare.
As for all the talk about Rodgers being gone in a year or two, I’m just not buying it. He will be put to the test (again) with an as-yet unproven WR group outside Adams. But it seemed the Pats changed WR personnel almost every year, and they and Brady still responded. I do expect the WR group to be better with ESB back and Funchess (a veteran presence) on the squad. There’s a lot riding on both sides of the ball.
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OP
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Clark will earn $7.69 million playing on the fifth year option in 2020.
Wow, with you referencing PFF the apocalypse must be just around the corner
With Clark entering his fifth season the time might have already passed to get a discount on an extension with him.
Well, Gutekunst did his best to make sure that won't happen in this year's draft.
gopkrs
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Anyone know what Clark would make on the tag? Or Jones for that matter.
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Wow, with you referencing PFF the apocalypse must be just around the corner
If you ever read what I posted, you'd see the majority of my issue is with their grades, not their data.
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HardRightEdge
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We don't know what the 2021 tag amounts will be. For 2020, the DT franchise tag is $16,126,000 and the RB franchise tag is $10,278,000.
https://overthecap.com/franchise-transition-and-rfa-tenders/
Transition tags are rarely used because the player is free to negotiate with any other team like a free agent. His existing team has only the right to first refusal which requires matching the highest offer. If the team chooses not to match that highest offer there is no compensation. If the player does not get any appealing offers he can sign for the transition tag amount. While the transition tag offers the team a few million dollars in possible savings over the franchise tag, going that route transfers all of the negotiating leverage from the team to the player. That's an unappealing trade-off.
Thanks for the fifth year salary info on Clark. $7.69 mil is a real bargain, but as you said, that precludes negotiating on an extension. Well whenever that day comes, it’s gonna be expensive. That said, he’s one of the best NTs in the league. So as they say, pay the man!Clark will earn $7.69 million playing on the fifth year option in 2020.
Wow, with you referencing PFF the apocalypse must be just around the corner
With Clark entering his fifth season the time might have already passed to get a discount on an extension with him.
Well, Gutekunst did his best to make sure that won't happen in this year's draft.
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HardRightEdge
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I'm not sure how you separate their grades from their data since the former is largely predicated on the latter.
Regardless, PFF has a history of being generous with their hurry counts and at one time had a ridiculous scoring system where a hurry counted the same as a hit with both counting nearly as much as a sack with no added points for a strip sack. If memory serves, it was 0.75 points for a hurry or hit, 1.0 for a sack.
It's been a few years since they posted rankings based on that silliness, at least in the free domain. If they still do that for paid subscribers I would suggest doing your own calculations of those play values. Otherwise, if there is something approximating those defective play grades in their current player grades I could not say and neither do they.
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HRE, why do only first round picks get fifth year options? Capt says Clark will make $7.69 mil which seems very low. It seems the club has all the power with a fifth year option. Anyway, it doesn’t make sense to me so I’m hoping for some wisdom from you!
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HardRightEdge
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First of all, the 5th. year option salary is dependent on which round the player was drafted. If the player was a top 10 pick it's one amount; if he was drafted lower in the first round it's a lower amount. Had Clark been a top 10 pick like DeForest Buckner his pay would be $12.378 mil.
Why is there a 5th. year option? It is simply a matter of the 2011 CBA negotiation.
Start by blaming Matt Ryan, Matthew Stafford and ultimately Sam Bradford, drafted at #3 2008, #1 in 2009 and #1 in 2010, respectively. These guys landed whomping $70+ mil rookie contracts making them among the highest paid players in the league. Bradford was the straw that broke the camel's back, 5 years/$78 mil/$50 mil guaranteed. If that was not the largest guarantee in the league it was close to it. These guys set the high water marks in their respective draft years which was spilling over into contracts for a few other non-QB draftees getting $60 mil rookie contracts.
Under a hard cap, who are the losers when the players of the future will be taking down big money right out of the gate? The current players. Who votes for the CBA? The current players. This kind of thing is not uncommon in collective bargaining where the current union members vote to protect their personal interests at the expense of future members. For example, you might see current union members protecting their own pensions while conceding lower pensions for future members. In this case I don't think you could tag the current players as selling out their future brethren given the objectively excessive pay going to guys who've yet to take an NFL snap.
Of course owners were not happy shelling out veteran star money for guys who could as easily be busts as not. So there was an easy meeting of the minds: the rookie salary scale. Starting in 2011, each position in the draft has had a total contract value for the duration of the rookie deal. Further, all draftee contracts are for 4 years. There's a little wiggle room in how the money is spread out over those 4 years, a bigger signing bonus for up more up front cash might be a point of negotiation for example, but the salary scale doesn't leave much negotiation latitude.
I don't see where Burrow has signed yet so Kyler Murray as a point of comparison was the #1 pick in the 2019 draft. His rooke deal under the salary scale was for $35.6 mil for 4 years, with a $23.6 mil signing bonus, around half of Bradford's rookie deal. While 2010 was an uncapped year, the cap in 2009 was $123 and then $120 mil in 2011. With 63% cap inflation between now and then, Bradford's deal in 2019 dollars would have been something like 4 years/$102 mil/$82 mil guaranteed. Without that rookie salary cap is that what Kyler Murray's rookie deal would have looked like? That's where it was heading, but I digress.
In short, the 5th. year option can be viewed as an extension of the rookie salary scale applicable to 1st. rounders as a team option, something extra tagged on in the process of that 2011 negotiation. Again, it would not have applied to any player already in the league when it was voted in.
Of course what goes around sometimes comes around. There are enough players in the league now playing under that rookie salary scale who think they've been getting short shrift. It's these players, the younger players, who are looking to catch up. I'm sure if you had a break down on the CBA vote, which awarded the owners the option to have a 17 game season in 2021, which is all but a lock now with the 2020 lost revenue, you'd find it was the young "invincible" guys voting "yea" for more money in the cap pot while the older players in good contracts opposed the change, most notably Rodgers, coming up short in opposition to the extended schedule.
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Thanks HRE, great explanation. What goes around comes around I guess. But giving a draftee $50 mil in guaranteed money before, as you say, they take a snap in the NFL is nuts.
Dantés
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That's a big ask though.
Dantés
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Easily done.
If PFF tells me that a particular corner was in man coverage for 35% of snaps, or that a particular edge rusher accrued half their pressures from the interior, or that a particular offense used inside zone for 28% of their rushing attempts, I generally take them at their word, allowing that there are doubtlessly discrepancies somewhere but not to the extent that it would have a dramatic effect. Those are relatively concrete things that most everyone would agree upon if they watched the same film.
If PFF tells me that a particular defensive linemen accrued a PFF grade of 76.5 while another came up with 72.3, I don't really put much stock in it because that has no context and basically comes down to the opinion of whichever guy they had watching that particular game.
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HardRightEdge
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Be that as it may, when the PFF stats are cited in the follwoing way you should expect the grade will follow:
Conversely, if you don't like a PFF grade, you're going to have a problem with the stats that go into it, whether it's a headline number or down to the granular level of assumptions about responsibility in grading individual plays, which goes to your point. In any case, the diffentiation between a 76.5 grade and 72.3 grade is hair splitting.
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Dantés
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Context is the key issue. Their data tends to be relatively concrete. Their grades are not. They're subjective and lack the context needed to understand them. For example, how many snaps did a guy play to earn a particular grade? What was he being asked to do? Who was he playing? Etc.
The early PFF founders actually debated whether or not to create summative grades for that reason.
Dantés
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Here's a simpler way of looking at Kenny Clark.
Over the next four seasons, how many guys would you want more than him?
I come up with Aaron Donald, Chris Jones, and Deforest Buckner. And that's it.
Over the next four seasons, how many guys would you want more than him?
I come up with Aaron Donald, Chris Jones, and Deforest Buckner. And that's it.
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HardRightEdge
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As I said, I was referencing specifically the way GleefulGary was using PFF stats while discouting PFF grades. Note he presented Clark's PFF stats from 2018, not 2019. Very good headline numbers. His overall PFF grade was 87.8, with an 88.8 pass rush grade, a grade in line with the impact plays presented, a few points shy of what PFF regards as "elite".
All I know of PFF's 2019 Clark analysis is that they gave him a 79.9 overall grade which I only know because of a google search just now into the back door PFF allows to see the teaser grade. I'm going to take a wild stab and say those same headline stats in 2019 as compiled by PFF, subjectivity and all, were not as good as those in 2018. I'll take a second wild stab and say the reason one year's data and not the other was posted was to support a "pay the man" argument. As day follows night, PFF grades flow from PFF stats, be they headline impact play counts or those granular -2 to +2 play grade compilations in however they are weighted for importance, which of course remains a mystery.
As for the matter of PFF originally contemplating not providing summation grades, I'm sure the result was a marketing decision. They would have been left with two general business models: 1) selling the raw data, down to the play by play grades, positioning, role, objective outcomes, etc. for people to apply their own algothims or 2) distilling the data with propriety algorithms down to digestible grades. There's other opportunities for analysis in either model without doing grades, but grades are essential to building a subscriber base. Telling somebody Joe Cornerback took 35% of his snaps in man coverage doesn't require grading analysis, but that number has little relevance unless you analyze what he did with those snaps vs. his zone snaps. Once you start distilling your data down to completion percentages, yards of separation, passes defended or whatever you deem relevant and say how that compares with other players, that's marketable but you are now grading the player. You might as well take the next step and put a number on it. Data dumps for algo jockies wouldn't have gotten this thing off the ground. And if you are going to assume the kind of football inteligence that allows you to grade every player on every play you're bound to take the next step to comparing players and grading. I'd say the guys who were against grading lacked imagination and ambition.
If one thinks the PFF grade is way off, then you'd best look at the PFF stats to see where you disagree with them in the counting or the way they weight the importance of one thing vs. another, providing you can find that in this proprietary system, which you probably won't.
To beat a dead horse, you said you found relevance in matters such as PFF stats telling you that, "a particular corner was in man coverage for 35% of snaps, or that a particular edge rusher accrued half their pressures from the interior, or that a particular offense used inside zone for 28% of their rushing attempts, I generally take them at their word."
First of all, pressures are themselves subjective and PFF is pretty liberal in dispensing them. As for the rest, at the risk of repetition, you don't know what relevance those snap types have in evaluating a player if you don't somehow put a grade on each type.
Let's say your lineman plays inside zone on 25% of his snaps, 25% drive blocking, and 50% on the move, pulling or outside zone or second level. You need a grade on those different kinds of snaps, however that is determined, to know how good he is in the various roles. You can take the PFF grades by role at face value, if they even grade by role, something you don't seem to want to do if they even provide them, or you can rely on the eye test that might tell you, for example, that Jenkins is a better second level blocker than he is a drive blocker in which case you don't need PFF. If you have your own sense of how good the player is the various roles you would have a sense of how often he performs them. Precision in exact %'s really isn't necessary given every evalution, however it is done, relies on a heavy dose of subjectivity.
I don't need PFF for guys I watch week in and week out. I'm inclined to give their grades more credence for Packer seconday players in coverage along with other stats since you usually don't get a good look at what they are doing unless the ball is thrown at them. How often they are thrown at is one stat this is telling. For players I rarely or never see, a PFF grade is better than highlight video sans lowlights or some random commentator who as likely as not hasn't watched the guy play much and has PFF grades in his back pocket anyway.
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HardRightEdge
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See, you didn't even present % of pressures from inside or whatnot to come to that conclusion though I would be curious to know Clark's % of snaps from 5-tech tangling with OTs and what he did with them if PFF in fact has that performance data by position. Just the data, not the grade!
Pretty low snap count I'd surmise.I'd assume your proposition that Clark is the 4th. best player among those guys is adjusting for his second contract age. I mean he's not Fletcher Cox until Cox hits the age wall which has not happened yet. I'll await Clark's 5-tech snap data to see how much apples to oranges we're talking about here.
The question isn't whether the 4th. best interior DL is worth that money. It's whether Kenny Clark playing predominantly or exclusively 0-3 tech is worth that money given the other ways it might be spent. I'm sure this is under consideration if the demand is that high or they would have already paid the man by now. I wouldn't pay him $16 mil per year taken in isolation. At this stage the best argument is, "who else ya got?". Well, that "who else" is Kenny Clark playing on the 5th. year option and then next year's chips are left to fall where they may.
Gutekust could have done something about that "who else" in the draft. Maybe he did with That Smith-Smith-Gary nickel/dime projection. I wouldn't have done what Gutekunst did in those first three rounds either, WR or not, so we'll just have to wait and see where his max pain point with Clark happens to sit.
It's worth noting he didn't re-sign Bulaga. He didn't sign Austin Hooper, a player of purported interest. In the past his tender for Kyle Fuller was too low to land him; he was purported to have keen interest in Allen Robinson and at least some interest in Sammy Watkins and he did not sign those guys either. He has a max $ amounts in mind, and where he placed them with those guys was not all that high given what they signed for with the exception of Watkins. We might see what that max is with Clark, or not.
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Dantés
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Clark is of a comparable quality to Cox and he's five years his junior.
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HardRightEdge
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I would not agree with the comparable, not until Cox goes into decline. So, does PFF have Clark's 5-tech snap count?
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Dantés
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I'm not the one to ask. I don't pay for their stuff.
But I also don't accept the construct that a 5 technique is inherently more valuable because they deal with OT's.
The majority of the top paid interior defensive linemen in the league are playing almost exclusively against interior OL.
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HardRightEdge
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That makes post #66 peculiar.
