I like Shields quite a bit. I thought he was our #1 priority. And I think Thompson overpaid for one of his own at least partially because there are just too many holes to fill. Hey, what's $2 - $3 mil per year among friends for a top 10-15 cover corner?
On a related matter, I wouldn't get too excited over the fact the Shields deal appears to count only about $5 mil against the 2014 cap.
We ended this last season with one of the youngest teams in the league and have 20 free agents. It's not practical nor preferable to fill most of those spots with a bunch of minimum salary rookies.
Figure Shields will be the first of 10 FA signings, give or take, be it our incumbents or outside guys.
I'd also not expect Thompson to get anywhere near full cap. As the Shields deal illustrates (see Post 10 above), typical multi-year deals have long tails with the cap hit back loaded to the out years of the contract.
One must consider what happens if we spend all the way up to max cap in 2014 including the $10 mil cap carryover which would imply a $10 mil max cap reduction in 2015 (offset by whatever league increase comes along).
There isn't all that much dough to spread around among 10 or so vets, at least a few of some decent provenance, without accumulating a lot of dead cap in the out years of the contracts.