Packers re-sign James Starks

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Chris Johnson is now CJ800 at best under a mandatory reduced snap count, providing he can play at all, and with his gradual decline from blazing to ordinary speed, his receiving numbers have crashed and his TD count has been low the last 2 seasons. If that's not enough, he ended the season on IR with a broken tibia.

Arian Forster's 2015 season ended in October with a torn Achilles. That bears repeating...he's an 8th. year running back with 1,500 career carries coming off an Achilles.

In fact, I see the odds of these guys being done altogether as being greater than surpassing Starks' 2015 productivity.

You guys are looking too much at what these guys once were, and not enough at where they are now. Then there's the risk they wouldn't quite mesh with the Packers blocking schemes providing they can even still play.

Starks cap number for 2016 is $2.25 mil. That's pretty good, in fact, for a low mileage guy coming off a good season running and receiving who's a fairly decent blocker, while having the added advantage of ending the year injury free. For 2017, his deal has a manageable $750,000 dead cap, while cutting him would yield $3 mil in cap savings, so there's an out if he doesn't have a good follow-up year in 2016.

The complaints about this deal are exaggerated.

That said, even with Lacy and Starks, the Packers need another RB, and I'd like to see a little more effort put into it than a UDFA.
 
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Patriotplayer90

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Chris Johnson is now CJ800 at best under a mandatory reduced snap count, providing he can play at all, and with his gradual decline from blazing to ordinary speed, his receiving numbers have crashed and his TD count has been low the last 2 seasons. If that's not enough, he ended the season on IR with a broken tibia.

Arian Forster's 2015 season ended in October with a torn Achilles. That bears repeating...he's an 8th. year running back with 1,500 career caries coming off an Achilles.

In fact, I see the odds of these guys being done altogether as being greater than surpassing Starks' 2015 productivity.

You guys are looking too much at what these guys once were, and not enough at where they are now. Then there's the risk they wouldn't quite mesh with the Packers blocking schemes providing they can even still play.

Starks cap number for 2016 is $2.25 mil. That's pretty good, in fact, for a low mileage guy coming off a good season running and receiving who's a fairly decent blocker, while having the added advantage of ending the year injury free. For 2017, his deal has a manageable $750,000 dead cap, while cutting him would yield $3 mil in cap savings, so there's an out if he doesn't have a good follow-up year in 2016.

The complaints about this deal are exaggerated.

That said, even with Lacy and Starks, the Packers need another RB, and I'd like to see a little more effort put into it than a UDFA.
The issue isn't primarily that they overpaid Starks, but overpaid a few other players as well without addressing the needs of the team. If they had signed an ILB that they've so desperately needed to fill the void during the last few years, this move wouldn't matter to most. But here we are again, depending on kids in the draft to complete our team next season. But at least our #5 OLB and #2 RB situation is settled.

As for Morris, his reduced production was likely due to the fact that his team was good his first year, then was horrible the next two. He had low YPC last year, but so did teammate and successor, who had even fewer YPC. This tells me there is more wrong with their running game than just the running backs. Lacy also had a decent YPC last year while being horribly overweight and out of shape, so GB obviously had a more efficient running game.
 
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Morris is the second leading rush yard gainer over the last 4 years, behind only Peterson. Now lets look behind those numbers:

http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/M/MorrAl00.htm

Morris' rushing production has been in steady decline in terms of yards, average and TDs, with drop offs from each year to the next. He wouldn't be the first RB whose abilities have been meaningfully diminished under the weight of a 290 carry average over the first 3 years. Despite having his workload reduced to 202 carries last season, the decline continued apace. In fact, some studies show RBs with a full workload starting in their rookie years typically show rapid decline at age 26. Call it the early career 1,000 carry mark.

Starks, on the other hand, had his most productive season in 2015 at age 29. That he runs counter to the age 26 barrier can be explained by his low career rushing attempts. Morris' career carries = 1078. Starks' career carries = 555, less than Morris' first 2 seasons. Starks has sustained the aggregate run game pounding of a 24 year old two-year bell cow.

While Starks' low mileage is partially attributable to being regularly injured over the years (Mr. Knee Sprain for a couple of years running), he stayed healthy throughout last season and didn't show any residual affects of those previous injuries.

Some Morris apologists observe that Washington's run blocking was sub-par last season, in part due to injuries at the TE position. That sounds familiar. While not being a particularly robust run blocking crew to start with, the Packers O-line were the walking wounded while the #1 TE is not much of a blocker. Starks was a more efficient runner than Morris based on yards per carry.

Let's consider versatility. Morris adds next to nothing as a receiver, with a season average of 12 catches for 91 yards. Those numbers are remarkably low for a guy on the field that much. I don't think we need to rehash Starks' good receiving numbers last season. We've already discussed the fact Starks was the offense's leading yards-from-scrimmage gainer at nearly 1,000 yards, considerably more than Morris, with that good run/pass versatility Morris can't touch.

Can Morris pass block? I honestly don't know. But given his lousy receiving record, he's a one-or-two down back not likely to be on the field in long yardage. Starks, over his career, has gone from bad to fairly decent as a blocker, has the 3rd. down profile for complementing a revitalized Lacy, while having enough chops to take over as a serviceable #1 back if Lacy falls flat.

So, yes, I think there is a good argument to be made for Starks over Morris. At a minimum, Morris-over-Starks is clearly not the slam dunk you make it out to be.

You make some valid points but none of them convince me it was a smart move to pay Starks $2.5 million more than Morris over two years.

Starks cap number for 2016 is $2.25 mil. That's pretty good, in fact, for a low mileage guy coming off a good season running and receiving who's a fairly decent blocker, while having the added advantage of ending the year injury free. For 2017, his deal has a manageable $750,000 dead cap, while cutting him would yield $3 mil in cap savings, so there's an out if he doesn't have a good follow-up year in 2016.

Well, if Starks doesn't have a good year the Packers wasted $3 million on a backup RB.
 
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The issue isn't primarily that they overpaid Starks, but overpaid a few other players as well without addressing the needs of the team. If they had signed an ILB that they've so desperately needed to fill the void during the last few years, this move wouldn't matter to most. But here we are again, depending on kids in the draft to complete our team next season. But at least our #5 OLB and #2 RB situation is settled.

As for Morris, his reduced production was likely due to the fact that his team was good his first year, then was horrible the next two. He had low YPC last year, but so did teammate and successor, who had even fewer YPC. This tells me there is more wrong with their running game than just the running backs. Lacy also had a decent YPC last year while being horribly overweight and out of shape, so GB obviously had a more efficient running game.
My comments were directed at Starks in a Starks thread. Each contract needs to evaluated on its own merits. If folks are unhappy with the other contracts, that's not a reason to be unhappy with this one, as you seem to suggest.

As for the rest, I'll stand on my earlier analysis, only reiterating that Morris is a non-entity in the passing game. And you did not answer my question...can he pass block?
 
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You make some valid points but none of them convince me it was a smart move to pay Starks $2.5 million more than Morris over two years.

Well, if Starks doesn't have a good year the Packers wasted $3 million on a backup RB.
With Morris you start from the point that he will not have a good season in the passing game. You start from one negative known with Morris going in, beside the other question marks relating to his downward performance trajectory. Starks has no obvious black mark that you can assume at this point, while coming off his strongest season.
 

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You make some valid points but none of them convince me it was a smart move to pay Starks $2.5 million more than Morris over two years.



Well, if Starks doesn't have a good year the Packers wasted $3 million on a backup RB.

Captian, I respect your opinion, I really do. You are clearly very knowledgeable about the NFL and the Packers. Sometimes though, I feel you just look too far into things. I mean, it is what it is at this point. Starks knows the system, he's been here and has been a productive backup. He wasn't going to spend that money on an outside guy anyways so what's the difference?
 
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With Morris you start from the point that he will not have a good season in the passing game. You start from one negative known with Morris going in, beside the other question marks relating to his downward performance trajectory. Starks has no obvious black mark that you can assume at this point, while coming off his strongest season.

Aside of the five fumbles on limited touches last season of course.
 
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Captian, I respect your opinion, I really do. You are clearly very knowledgeable about the NFL and the Packers. Sometimes though, I feel you just look too far into things. I mean, it is what it is at this point. Starks knows the system, he's been here and has been a productive backup. He wasn't going to spend that money on an outside guy anyways so what's the difference?

The difference being that Thompson overpaying for Crosby, Perry, Starks and to a lesser degree Guion and Taylor will result in the Packers not being able to re-sign one of their core players next season.
 
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The difference being that Thompson overpaying for Crosby, Perry, Starks and to a lesser degree Guion and Taylor will result in the Packers not being able to re-sign one of their core players next season.
To repeat, whatever one thinks about Crosby, Perry, Guion and Taylor, that has absolutely nothing to do with Starks.
 

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The difference being that Thompson overpaying for Crosby, Perry, Starks and to a lesser degree Guion and Taylor will result in the Packers not being able to re-sign one of their core players next season.

Decisions would have had to have been made either way on the upcoming guys so what's the difference?
 
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Aside of the five fumbles on limited touches last season of course.
Unlike the certainty that Morris will provide nothing in the passing game, a repeat of Starks' 2015 ball security issues is not certain.

In the 5 seasons prior to 2015, Starks had 5 fumbles on 470 touches, 1 every 94 touches. Not what you'd call good, but not terrible either. Those figures do not include 136 playoff touches without a fumble. His bad 1 per 38 touches last season may be a one-off, as his previous 5 years suggest. Morris can't catch; that we know.
 
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To repeat, whatever one thinks about Crosby, Perry, Guion and Taylor, that has absolutely nothing to do with Starks.

True, nevertheless when talking about Thompson's offseason we have to take a look at all of his moves.

Decisions would have had to have been made either way on the upcoming guys so what's the difference?

The difference is the Packers would have had a ton of additional cap space to spend.
 
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Unlike the certainty that Morris will provide nothing in the passing game, a repeat of Starks' 2015 ball security issues is not certain.

In the 5 seasons prior to 2015, Starks had 5 fumbles on 470 touches, 1 every 94 touches. Not what you'd call good, but not terrible either. His bad 1 per 38 touches last season may be a one-off, as his previous 5 years suggest. Morris can't catch; that we know.

Maybe Morris not rushing for at least 1,000 yards last season was just an exemption, we both don't know about it as well as with Starks fumbles.
 
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Maybe Morris not rushing for at least 1,000 yards last season was just an exemption, we both don't know about it as well as with Starks fumbles.
Morris is not a one year issue...the downward trajectory has been in evidence each year.
 
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Morris is not a one year issue...the downward trajectory has been in evidence each year.

He still rushed for more than 1,000 yards in 2014, something Starks hasn't even come close to during any of his six seasons in the league.
 

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I dont understand the distaste for starks contract??? Its not like we gave him anything. He earned it!

It seems to be an extension of this mindset that rbs arent valuable anymore... Which i strongly disagree with. Rbs touch the ball 20 plus times a game... Does that sound like someone who doesnt deserve to be drafted in the early rounds, or be paid big bucks? star wr might get 10 catches a game and we dont hesitate to pay him 10 mil or more... So why get bent out of shape for a rb who gets 10 touches a game gets 1/4 of the salary??? Its nuts.
 
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He still rushed for more than 1,000 yards in 2014, something Starks hasn't even come close to during any of his six seasons in the league.
Morris might get to 1,000 yards with Dallas if they gave him 250 carries, plus or minus, if the downward slide stops at last season's level. That's one of the best run blocking O-lines in the league. It's not likely, but I suppose it could happen with enough injuries to other guys and he doesn't poop out. Even so, he'll continue to be a zero in the passing game, and that says nothing about what he'd do with the Packers relative to Starks.
 
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Morris might get to 1,000 yards with Dallas if they gave him 250 carries, plus or minus, if the downward slide stops at last season's level. That's one of the best run blocking O-lines in the league. It's not likely, but I suppose it could happen with enough injuries to other guys and he doesn't poop out. Even so, he'll continue to be a zero in the passing game, and that says nothing about what he'd do with the Packers relative to Starks.

I'm not suggesting the Packers should have signed Morris. He will most likely compete for a starting job with the Cowboys though while Starks will get limited touches with Lacy hopefully returning in top shape. Yet Starks is the one getting paid significantly more, hard to understand.
 

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Chris Johnson is now CJ800 at best under a mandatory reduced snap count, providing he can play at all, and with his gradual decline from blazing to ordinary speed, his receiving numbers have crashed and his TD count has been low the last 2 seasons. If that's not enough, he ended the season on IR with a broken tibia.

Arian Forster's 2015 season ended in October with a torn Achilles. That bears repeating...he's an 8th. year running back with 1,500 career carries coming off an Achilles.

In fact, I see the odds of these guys being done altogether as being greater than surpassing Starks' 2015 productivity.

You guys are looking too much at what these guys once were, and not enough at where they are now. Then there's the risk they wouldn't quite mesh with the Packers blocking schemes providing they can even still play.

Starks cap number for 2016 is $2.25 mil. That's pretty good, in fact, for a low mileage guy coming off a good season running and receiving who's a fairly decent blocker, while having the added advantage of ending the year injury free. For 2017, his deal has a manageable $750,000 dead cap, while cutting him would yield $3 mil in cap savings, so there's an out if he doesn't have a good follow-up year in 2016.

The complaints about this deal are exaggerated.

That said, even with Lacy and Starks, the Packers need another RB, and I'd like to see a little more effort put into it than a UDFA.

It seems like everyone's way to manage the cap is to get a top talent superstar at #1 and a minimum wage backup at every position and pray no one gets hurt.
 
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It seems like everyone's way to manage the cap is to get a top talent superstar at #1 and a minimum wage backup at every position and pray no one gets hurt.

Aside of players being on their rookie deals there aren't a lot of primary backups playing for the minimum salary at most positions. Those guys are normally at the bottom of the depth chart.
 
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It seems like everyone's way to manage the cap is to get a top talent superstar at #1 and a minimum wage backup at every position and pray no one gets hurt.
Once you get past the QB position, where having a good one is essential to winning as everybody knows, there's a vast expanse between that player and the minimum salary bench players who don't make the 45 man game day roster. As demonstrated in several recent Super Bowls, you don't necessarily need a great QB to get to the big game if you're fielding a great defense, but he must at least qualify as "good". It all starts at the QB position, wherever you may find him.

Further, you can't expect to consistently populate the roster with superstars out of your #1 picks if you are consistently picking from the mid-20's spots on down. If you consistently get just core players by year 2 from those draft positions you're way ahead of the league average, with the emphasis on "consistently". In most drafts, there's not a lot to differentiate the 25th. pick from the 50th. except need, scheme fit or unusual value created by a particularly deep player position in the draft. And if a deep draft position also happens to be a position of roster strength already, it's not going to be exploitable. I think we can put to bed the "best player available" Thompson fallacy. That view may have had some validity in his earlier years of roster building; he's been as much a need picker as anybody on day 1 of the draft in recent years in an effort to fix glaring problems in order stay near the top.

You might also be thinking of a certain team securing a Hall of Fame QB with the 24th. pick. Whether that was the result of a rare visitation from the scouting muses providing some flash of insight or just plain luck (likely some of both), it's a rare and fortuitous occurrence not likely to be repeated at other positions in other years.

The impact of the rookie salary scale implemented with the 2011 collective bargaining agreement is often underappreciated as a key to roster building. The landscape changed entirely 5 years ago. Once you have your QB, a key to cap efficiency (and thereby a key to winning) is who you have on your roster from the previous 3 rookie classes plus the current year's rookies. In a draft-and-develop approach, which no one takes to a further extreme than Thompson, it's the key to building that vast ground between the great QB and the bottom of the roster.

All draftee contracts are for 4 years, 3 years for undrafted rookies with meaningful restrictions on their earning power in year 4 even if they pan out. Those contracts are cheap. Even a merely decent starter coming out of the low first round is dirt cheap in his first 4 seasons. Further, a rookie contract cannot be renegotiated or extended until after the 3rd. year per the CBA. So even if you get lucky with an immediate superstar, he has to wait.

An extreme illustration would be the two Seattle Super Bowl teams where the cap hit for Wilson, Wagner and Sherman was less than $4 mil per year combined. None were 1st. round picks. It doesn't matter where in the draft you find star players, or even solid starters, so long as they emerge early. Now in their second contracts, those three players will count $39 million against the cap in 2016. Are you going to get better play out of these guys in 2016 than you did in 2014? I don't see how that could happen. So there's a huge gap to fill, a cap equivalent of 3 Pro Bowl level veterans you might buy in free agency, or a wide assortment of lesser vets. The only way to cover that gap is to draft well, replenishing the supply of good, cheap players. That could be over the future 2 years in this case, or it could also include the prior year or two with young quality on the bench stuck behind vet starters who are now ready to play and play well.

Let's take a more typical example that's close to home: Damarious Randall.

As the #30 pick, the rookie salary scale brought him in with the following cap hits in millions over the first 4 years: $1.4, $1.8, $2.2 and $2.5, in that order. Good rookie year, with the look of having some upside still to go. Good pick even if a "superstar" projection seems unrealistic.

Let's forget the Randall's rookie year and upside for a moment and imagine the same guy playing exactly the same way in his 4th. season entering free agency. Would he get paid at least the equivalent of House in free agency to play #2 perimeter corner? You'd have to think so. House's cap number in millions over the 4 years of his current contract are $6.5, $6.0, $6,0, $6.0. You'd have to say the cumulative cap advantage at that one position for the Packers over the Jags is at least $4 mil per year for 4 years.

And that's just one player.

You could go toward the bottom of the roster and look at a guy like Ripkowski. Good contributor on special teams. His cap number over 4 years is $2.4 mil. You could be paying double that or more for a 5th. season career special teamer. He presents value over 4 years even if he never takes a snap from scrimmage. Or how about Janis? Even just playing gunner he's a bargain compared to the $2 mil per year Bush got to play the same position with comparable if not better play from Janis.

The point being, in the vast roster expanse between the QB and 46th. player, the key is maximizing contract value in the other 44 players, i.e., getting cumulative performance above the cumulative cap, and the best place to find it is in the rookie contracts. The more favorable value propositions you accumulate, from the top to the bottom of the roster, and the fewer value proposition busts you carry, the better you'll be.
 
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I'm starting to think Captain wouldn't be happy unless we let go half the team for enough cap to sign back TT's picks.
 
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I'm starting to think Captain wouldn't be happy unless we let go half the team for enough cap to sign back TT's picks.

I really have no clue what you're trying to say but I would be happy with Thompson re-signing core veterans without overpaying for them allowing him to use (and actually do it) free agency to address positions of obvious needs with players signing for reasonable contracts.
 

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Honestly, all these decent to small overpayments to our "own" keeps me thinking back to Lang and Sitton are both planned "walks" in next year's off season....1 without a doubt. We just won't be able to afford them both and keep Bakh and some other pieces.
 

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