mikeak":g1ry0835 said:
ringless":g1ry0835 said:
I knew having 20 expiring contracts in one-offseason would spell trouble and it did.
.
Which is my concern for next off season
These situations may or may not be equivalent. It really depends on how well one is set up to replace these players (comments in red).
DJrmb":g1ry0835 said:
At this time Seattle will be projected to have 17 UFA's next year per Spotrac.com:
Jimmy Graham - none (Rookie option this year in strong class, or resign)
Luke Joeckel - (hedge for Glowinski/Odhiambo development)
Kam Chancellor - none (Rookie option this year, also extention candidate this year or next)
Eddie Lacy - none (likely not resigned. Also generically available UFA talent in any given year)
Bradley McDougald - none (possible Rookie option this year)
Luke Willson - Vannett
Garry Gilliam - Ifedi
Deshawn Shead - Elliott, Lane or likely rookie option
Blair Walsh - none.
Oday Aboushi - Glowinski/Odhiambo or rookie option in 2018/19)
Justin Britt - none. Priority resign
Perrish Cox - easily replaced with street UFA
Demetrius McCray - easily replaced with street UFA
Pierre Desir - Likely replaced with dev CB in draft 2018/19
Cassius Marsh - possible resign. Should be under 2m
Kevin Pierre-Louis - easily replaced with street UFA
When you break down the list, now it looks downright manageable. Seattle has really only three guys they have to truly consider resigning: Graham, Chancellor and Britt. Of those three, there are elite draft options available in 2017. How we predraft for need next month will give us a clue to what our future intentions are for these three. And in the cases of Graham and Chancellor -- those guys are getting into their third contracts. Teams have to tread carefully with those deals, since decline to age and injury is at an elevated risk. But just as important -- Chancellor and Graham are already on high value deals. Resigning them is a negligible bump (if indeed a bump at all) from their current cap figures.
The only hard must resign in this entire list is Britt as of today. Many of these UFAs are simply hedges for guys we just added last year. Meaning that draft strategy for 2018 probably rests on how those guys develop. Most of these UFAs we've added are merely bridge options to allow flexibility in the upcoming draft. And their quality is of a pretty generically replaceable level (Gilliam, Aboushi, McCray, Desir, Pierre-Louis, McDougald, Cox).
And we do have flexibility in dropping some contracts in 2018. Lane (should he again suffer a bad season), and Kearse. Those 2 contracts alone would account for Britt's increase and then some.
It looks like we've established a better bridge option for the OL this year as opposed to last year. Which is smart considering the lack of talent in the OL class this year. With the cap flexibility we enjoy -- we can still resign one or even two new faces if they should have standout seasons.
I am not intimately familiar with how Arizona was set up to account for their cap defections this year. Maybe they had guys waiting in the wings. Maybe not. Seattle added a LOT of talent last year. Eight rookies and 4 UDFAs made the active roster. We should assume about 8+ make it from this year's class. Seattle is setting themselves up well to reload with players steeping on the depth chart.
Overall, the # of players seems daunting. But on closer examination, it's really not at all that scary.