Cooper in Dallas? Not good.
Julio in Atlanta? Meh.
Aj Green in Cincy? No.
Beckham? Injured.
It’s a pretty massive gamble giving a thin, breakable skilled player a huge contract. The nature of the WR and RB position exposes them to a higher rate of season ending injury.
So not only do I feel Golladay is not in the same category as the top 5-7 WRs in the league, I would be hesitant to give him a huge contract even he was (which he isn’t).
He’s a good player that we should try to keep, and I’m sure we have. However, I don’t put all my eggs in one basket, hoping he stays motivated and healthy. WRs and RB’s almost never do.
True … and I’m all for keeping him if the money makes sense but … let’s keep in mind that if he’s asking for somewhere in the 20+ mil range that a top WR is getting then we have to weigh that cost.
Look at it like this.
KG = 22 Mil
MJ = 9 Mil
Tate = 8.5 Mil
Amendola = 4.9 Mil
Total = 22.4 Mil
That’s what Tate, MJ and Amendola made in 2020. Which is better? keep in mind you still have to have two other WR’s to pay next to KG. Let’s say you go cheap and put two rookies next to him at a cost of 3 Mil total.
Which is better KG + 2 rookies for 25 mil.
Or 3 veteran WR’s like Amendola, Tate and MJ?
If someone wants to merge with the other thread, that’s fine. I agree with your points.
I also feel like WR’s and RB’s losing all motivation after getting that huge contract is a very real thing, and we’ve seen it over and over. They are both risky positions to play, that constantly put you in vulnerable, injurious positions, so it stands to reason.
To your point I always felt CJ wasn’t the same post contract but I chalked a lot of that up to injury.
But that’s kinda your point too. One major injury and the players drive tends to drop and they retire early. Maybe that doesn’t happen if he doesn’t have that huge contract to fall back on.
I tend to believe that WR is one area that the sum is greater than the individual. Meaning…I’d rather have 3 quality WR’s than one CJ who has no one across from him.
KG, Frank Darby (3rd), Dazz Newsome (5th) for 23.5m next year
then something like:
Will Fuller, Keelan Cole and Josh Reynolds or whatever you could cobble together in free agency for similar money.
KG affords us the luxury of going young with that position group while still having a decent likelihood of it being close to a league average unit if we draft wisely.
Obviously there’s a balance in there somewhere but If the price is too high you have to move on too.
It all comes down to cost and managing the cap wisely.
One of my biggest pet peeve when we had CJ was that we rarely had anyone opposite of him that was worth a damn. Most of the time CJ saw Double and triple coverages I always felt that it made it easier to defend us in the red zone.
WR’s and RB’s by far have the highest rate of injury and performance drop after big contracts. Does it happen at other positions? Of course. But WR’s and RB’s are the poster children by far. It’s the nature of the position.
The nature of the way KG plays, he takes big shots. I don’t think that is going away. I like the guy and he vastly has outplayed his draft position. I’m torn. I think we should have paid him as he was emerging. We didn’t so now we’ll have to pay him top dollar and it won’t be a front friendly deal with outs on the huge money. Hate to say it but we are faced with trading him without a replacement and probably screwing our playoff chances, paying him huge money now so we have a motivated guy for a run (and he’ll probably get IR’d 2 games into it), or playing the waiting game, seeing if he makes it healthy and doesn’t diminish his number via injury, and likely lose him to the market.
Last option would be the franchise tag, which IMHO may be the best worst option. Maybe then you give a new regime an option to trade him and hit the reset button with a higher round draft pick, or pay him without the bitter taste of what BQ did by making him play out his contract. If it’s not a new staff, then we probably had a playoff run and then up to BQ what to do. Maybe trade him or let him play on a franchise tag and see what happens there.
That part about the type of hits Kenny takes is particularly important.
He gets blasted, I was legit surprised how he bounced up everytime in the 4th quarter.
It’s why I wanted him paid so bad in the offseason with a 3 year out. He would already have his money and we would be able to move in 2 more seasons.
He’s playing better than ever and we literally didn’t win a game with him out and now we have a winning record when he plays, I just don’t see this playing out well.
If Quinn and Patricia are here next year it will probably be because Kenny played well and if they let him walk while Trufant, Big V and Jesse James sucked up money to be Mediocre at best then the locker room is toast again.
WRs usually drop off at 30, that’s a fact… Add in that KG’s bread and butter is winning contested catches which usually leads to taking a hit and you get someone who has 2-3 years left of being really productive. It’s VERY rare that a WR performs into their 30s and most of the ones that do are Welker/Amendola type guys. To get someone like Fitzgerald who plays at a high level at 32-33 is an albatross.
I believe we’ve discussed things like this before and found out that people like you and I actually scratch this stuff down on paper and let the data lead us to wherever its going to go. Other people just grab examples and run with a theory, without ever putting in the detailed work.