About The "Trade The #1 Pick For More Picks" Thing ... What About Free Agency?

I definitely see us being more active in free agency this year. In fact, I see us doing that before trading down for a bunch of picks.

but i think i got the point. its not about getting more players. its about what are the smartest moves for the future of the colts.

the colts need a qb so trading the #1 pick is dumb
manning isnt healthy so we cant pick up the option

When you draft talent, they often need time to develop into significant contributors. But the advantage is that they are learning, growing, and developing habits with the team. It gets harder to have good chemistry with free agents, I think, because you don’t have that organic growth process you get with young players. Philly is the best recent example of a team that went overboard in free agency but couldn’t put it all together. I think free agency can be a valuable tool (that Polian was too reluctant to exploit), but I think you have to be very cautious and measured about how you use it. All else equal, I would rather see very successful drafts than very agressive free agency moves.

Your math and logic are off a bit. Does releasing Manning allows cap room to sign other players in FA? Yes, but to the exaggerated level in your post. The savings from having Luck at $6 million vs. Peyton at $18 million is $12 million/yr, which would allow you to sign 2-3 solid FA’s at $4-6 million/player. You don’t get 8 or 10 players or whatever your post said because over the life of Peyton’s contract you would save around $48 million, but each year you would have $12 million or so to use. The only way you get to more than a few different players is if you sign 2-3 players each year to 1-year deals and then sign different players to 1-year deals the next year to replace the other players. So basically no more than a couple of these FA pickups will play together at any given time.

In conclusion, trading Luck and releasing Manning are actually very similar strategies, in that each allows you to use the compensation to acquire/add 2-3 more potential starter talents. For trading Luck, it’s the acquired draft picks and for Manning, it’s the open cap room. So since both strategies are somewhat similar in the short-term, aside from the difference between Manning and Luck, I would have to think that Irsay prefers the one that also has good long-term implications.

One of the big problems here is that you aren’t figuring in the new CBA with the extra picks. You are using Luck’s smaller salary, but you fail to mention how little the three first round and two second round picks will be making. There will be a net profit of four young players over three years in the first two rounds. Combined, they would be making about $10-14 million. That’s a pretty incredible amount when you consider that Bradford is making about $13 million per year.

You also failed to take into account that free agent contract values will increase this year. The money that rookies didn’t get last year, and won’t get this year, has to go to veterans. That means teams will start paying more to free agents.

The other issue I have is that free agents tend to be worth much less than they are getting paid. It’s not a smart way to build a team. The draft is the smart way to build a team. Check with Washington on that.