Derek Carr won’t take a pay cut for 2025 but willing to restructure to help the cap

You and I are on the same page on all of this. The big fear is the dumb deals. I feel like we used to sign a few cheap mid tier higher upside / backups on other teams type players every year and now it seems like they find it more important to get bigger names (looking at you Derek Carr and Chase Young) that make too much and had under performed on their last teams. As though we could get more out of the players those teams couldn't get. There haven't been a lot of examples of that working, but the few that have (Brees, Vilma, DD) makes them keep trying.
What you're saying you hope they do is exactly what they did last year. They signed a bunch of mid tier higher upside backups and the only "name" guy was Chase Young but they didn't give him a dumb contract. They even stand to get a 3rd round pick if he walks. Not sure why you refuse to give them credit for how they handled last year when it's exactly what you're requesting they do in 2025 (and likely what they'll do)

I meah check it out for yourself. Last years FA class was as low profile as it gets. Young was the 46th highest paid DE, rougly a #2 level contract. Loomis, the guy everyone loves to hate right now was apart of the decision making you're saying they need to do moving forward lol.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id...-free-agency-tracker-offseason-moves-signings