salary cap hell!
See this is the kind of back and forth that is helpful. This made me think. You make really good points. I think you and I can middle here. I don't like our cap strategy. But I also don't like our overall all in approach. But you point out that the cap strategy didn't play a part in plain old bad signings. Bad signings are bad no matter the cap strategy. I would argue that those signings are part of the overall all in approach but I understand your argument. I would argue that drafting Penning was also part of the all in approach. The Saints needed a WR and a LT to come in and help immediately so they moved heaven and earth to make that happen.
So if we want to separate the cap strategy from the holistic, "all in" approach then that's a solid debate to be had. I think we can agree that it's not just one thing holding this team back. The cap certainly didn't have anything to do with DA and Pete. I see where you're coming from. You don't want people to just blame everything on our cap management and that's fair enough. There's enough nuance here to talk about things without getting personal.
Thank you, this is definitely a good common ground.
Just to be clear - my position is that no cap strategy survives draft bust after draft bust, free agent bust after free agent bust, and coaching bust after coaching bust.
I also think there is a misconception out there that teams with cap space health are out here cutting big contract guys all nilly willy without major repercussions that would jeopardize said cap space health. Those teams have the same issue we deal with, only their worry is their present money rather than their future money.
We have to look at the NFL salary cap as endless sets of 5 year intervals, not just singular years. And each of those years, except of course the exact wrong one for us (2021) saw big increases in the dollars available.
Is the system perfect? Hell no. But it is a cycle we have learned to work around and ultimately at the end of the day, football comes down to coaching and making the right calls with the roster/drafting, not an accounting ledger having an annoying negative number at the start of each year.
I mean, we literally drafted the only LT (the second most important position in football IMO) from the first three rounds that isn't capable of starting. We have got to get better.
We probably miss guys like Terry Fontenot more than we realize. That was a huge under-the-radar loss when it comes to evaluating. I'll also add, and many people may not want to hear this, that we can't continue to let SOME people, including a once failed dumpster fire GM, ride the coattails of the anomaly 2017 draft class success.