I guess my only change or beef with the system is to maybe start throwing out more money to the defensive side when re-signing our own players (I think they have started to do that with Freeney and Sanders). I think the offense will be alright if we didnt have all these high salary paid players like Harrison or Addai (if they re-sign him after he becomes a FA). I really do not know where Im going with this…but something in that nature on what I just said.

Peyton will cost us around 21.5 mil this year I believe. Harrison may be gone, but that 13.2 mil still cost us between 6 and 7 mil in committed monies. We have several expensive toys, particularly on offense. Wayne. Clark. Defensively, Freeney and Sanders.

And let’s not forget that 6+ mil being well spent on Diem. Maybe we should do something about that cost, because he did not impress me this year to the tune of 6 million.

The term free agents is a misnomer, as they are far from free. Unless they stink…

Think of it this way. If we went after FAs who could ultimately fail in our system we wouldn’t be able to keep the guys we consider our core. Those guys would be Mathis, Freeney, Sanders, Manning, Wayne, Clark, Harrison (granted he’s not living up to his cap hit and that’ll probably be addressed) with the rest being middle of the road players. Most other teams go out and get super high priced FAs that teams can’t afford to keep. Our players have been assesses and Polian and the front office have decided who the “if we fill in with good roley players and make sure to keep these guys we always stand a chance”. And he’s right. There aren’t many other teams that can boast the quality we have and that’s because we mainly draft guys to surround them with acceptable talent. If you notice most of the guys that get cannibalized from our team don’t perform as well as they did with us. There’s a few exceptions to the rule, but for the most part they talent we’ve paid to keep we had to pay in order to keep them from getting huge contracts from other teams. That’s why you see the large dropoff in player salaries that isn’t the norm on the other teams in the league.

I mean seriously, look at the FAs that’ve gotten the huge deals. Is Nate Clements worth 4 million more than Bob Sanders? Nope. Is Julius Peppers salary that’s going to be monstrous mean he’s significantly better than Freeney or Mathis? Nope.

It’s because of our core that we’re as consistently good as we have been. There were a couple more notable core players that either retired out of the blue (Tarik Glen) or wanted more than we thought they were worth (Edge). But overall, we’ve kept a winning mentality formula with this method. And it ended up happening over a short period of time, that’s why we’ve been leaking our potential. Our team is still relatively young, but now we’ll start seeing some of our higher paid players retiring and such. That’ll clear up cap space to keep our prospects, but I don’t think the approach will change dramatically. We’re just not tiered in a way that allows us to see a guy retire here or there and constantly free up cap space. For the most part all of our high priced players are all around the 6-10 year veteran mark.

I do find the point about younger players not being as seasoned especially come playoff time. I hadn’t really thought of that but it makes alot of sense. If you remember Peyton’s comment earlier in the year he was saying how all the young guys were shocked at being 3-4 and Peyton and the older guys having to come in and say “this is how the NFL is supposed to be”. I think it’s a very good and understated point that I hadn’t considered.