Dukes on McDaniels (...Cutler related)

[nfoligno]

Agreed. IMHO, the team basically went "all in" when they gave up all the picks for Cutler. At that point, we declared him to be a franchise QB, if that was ever in question. To be honest, I am a surprised we haven't already heard about contract negotiations.

 

I have no idea what his contract will ultimately look like. Frankly, contracts have gotten so out of control (IMHO) that it is damn near as if precident no longer matters. It seems like just yesterday that Manning getting over $30m SB was considered unbelievable, and now how many have signed deals for more. For that matter, it seems like just yesterday that a $20m SB was considered incredible.

 

 

 

Pix - I honestly don't buy the argument that Cutler has to do anything spectacular to get a top of the line contract from the Bears. His value as a top QB in the league was established when we gave up 2 1sts, a third, and Orton to get him.

 

I'll tell you some more things about Cutler's new contract.

 

It will account for the years he still has left under contract too. So, if he signs one later this year, it will probably be a 5 year extension to the 2 years that will be left on his current contract, but restructured to the Bears benefit.

 

He has 2 years left that are scheduled to pay him roughly $5.5 million in 2010, and $14.8 million in 2011. So, if they give him another $80 million over the following 5 years (avg of $16 mil per year) then he has a $100 million contract easily.

 

A decent rule of thumb for long term contracts for high end players is to pay them a contract average per year of the current franchise tag at the player's position. If you tack on a few mill this year to use the cap we have, then the average over those 7 years drops to right about what Cassel was scheduled to make on th franchise tag this year.

 

We'll see, but I think the Sun Times was way off by suggesting that Cassel's contract is a starting point for the Cutler negotiations. They should have said that Stafford's contract (6 years $72 mil ($12 mil per yr avg) and $40 million guaranteed) is the baseline.

 

Other contracts for comparison:

 

Peyton Manning: 7 yrs $99 million ($14 mil per yr avg) - signed 3 years ago

 

Carson Palmer: 6 years $118.75 million (19.1 mil per yr avg) - signed last year

 

Ben Roethlisberger: 8 years $102 mil contract (12.75 mil average) - signed last year

 

Now I don't know the details of the incentives for each guy's contract, but I could see giving him a base average of $12-14 mil per year and a million bonus for each level of the playoffs we win each year maxed at $4 mil per year. That puts him in the Carson Palmer range per year if we win the SB, but puts his base closer to the Aaron Rogers / Ben Roethlisberger / Matt Cassel range if we miss the playoffs.

 

Cliff Stein will write a contract that will allow Cutler's agent to crow about the max value, and also protect us a bit on the high end with incentives and escalators.

 

That's at least what sounds reasonable IMHO.

 

[Mongo3451]

Cliff Stein will write a contract that will allow Cutler's agent to crow about the max value, and also protect us a bit on the high end with incentives and escalators.

Love the insight.

[LT2_3]

You can say agree and disagree. I do think Lt2 made a great point, and frankly, I had forgotten that he was still under the franchise tag contract. As he said, while the contract numbers are big, they are not "that" big when you factor how much they were going to have to pay him this season alone.

 

Still, I too would have held off for a while.

 

I don't know what you have in mind as "a while", but the deadline for extending franchised players to long term contracts was July 15th. If they had waited, they would have had to wait until after the season.

 

[nfoligno]

Do you know what the deadline is to re-sign/extend a non-franchised player, and still allocate a portion of their salary against this years cap? I was thinking late September, but I'm just not sure.

 

To me, that is a key date. We still have quite a bit of cap space, and w/ a player like Cutler due a huge pay increase, I think it would be a huge waste of space not to extend him sooner, rather than later.

 

Some want to wait and make him prove himself for a season. For me, if we have $15-20m in current cap space (depending on who you ask) it would seem far more logical to extend him now and allocate as much as possible against this years cap. If we have to give him $35m in bonus money, or however much, making a 1/3 of that a 2009 roster bonus would really held limit the impact of his contract on a move forward basis.

 

I don't know what you have in mind as "a while", but the deadline for extending franchised players to long term contracts was July 15th. If they had waited, they would have had to wait until after the season.

 

[LT2_3]

Do you know what the deadline is to re-sign/extend a non-franchised player, and still allocate a portion of their salary against this years cap? I was thinking late September, but I'm just not sure.

 

To me, that is a key date. We still have quite a bit of cap space, and w/ a player like Cutler due a huge pay increase, I think it would be a huge waste of space not to extend him sooner, rather than later.

 

Some want to wait and make him prove himself for a season. For me, if we have $15-20m in current cap space (depending on who you ask) it would seem far more logical to extend him now and allocate as much as possible against this years cap. If we have to give him $35m in bonus money, or however much, making a 1/3 of that a 2009 roster bonus would really held limit the impact of his contract on a move forward basis.

 

It's usually late October, early November.

[defiantgiant]

I do get your argument, and others, who point to the surrounding talent he had to work w/, but I think some also don't realize that he had some negative surrounding talent as well. While he had great weapons at his disposal, at the same time, he had neither a great OL, nor a great run game, to rely on. Just think about that for a moment. Most any time I can think of a young QB w/o prior experience coming in and looking good, they did it while protected by a damn good OL and had a solid run game to take the pressure off. Having weapons to throw to is great, but w/o the protection, you are still asking a lot of the young QB.

 

Yeah, this is exactly it: Cassel did very respectably with bad, bad protection. That's not an easy thing for a first-time starter to do. And while the Pats' run game wasn't exactly bad by any means, it wasn't nearly as strong as Baltimore's or Atlanta's: those two were top 5 in the league, easily. So both Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco had much better ground games to take the pressure off, and they both had MUCH better protection, to boot. I think what Cassel did was pretty impressive, and I think the Pats' adjustments over the course of the season provide a pretty clear roadmap for how the Chiefs can get the best possible performance out of him. I'll be surprised if he's not at least in the middle of the pack among starting QBs next year.

[nfoligno]

Agreed. You look at Atlanta and Baltimore, each starting rookies, and you find a direct opposite situation to what Cassel had. Each had strong OLs and a strong ground game. In such a situation, a lot of pressure is taken off the QB. Those two QBs didn't have the elite targets to work w/, but also faced less pass rush and had more time in the pocket. Cassel on the other hand had more weapons, but regardless, had to make quicker decisions and did so w/ a lot more weight on his shoulders.

 

I swear, when talking about this, it remeinds me of our teams some years ago. Minny had Culpepper starting his first season (though I think it was actually his 2nd NFL season). That year, Minny often went w/ a max protetion and pounded the ball. Culpepper had great targets, but even w/ that, Minny knew the key was protecting the QB and allowing the young QB time to make his reads/decisions and get rid of the ball. The result was a very successful season for Culpepper and their offense.

 

In contrast, look how we used Cade McNown when he was still very green. Understand, I am not saying Cade was better than he showed, or that he could have ever been a good NFL QB. But it still hacks me off today when I think about how we used him. Under Crowton, we put Cade in what I would consider an impossible situation for a young QB. We spread it out, often even going w/ an empty backfield. We relied heavily on the pass, rather than running the ball more often to take pressure off the QB. Cade may have had weapons to work w/, but what he didn't have was time. W/o the protection, defenses simply tee'd off on Cade and he proved incapable of making the quick decisions. Again, I am not trying to defend Cade, but at the same time, I believe we went w/ about as bad of a scheme as possible considering the youth and inexperience of our QB.

 

Yeah, this is exactly it: Cassel did very respectably with bad, bad protection. That's not an easy thing for a first-time starter to do. And while the Pats' run game wasn't exactly bad by any means, it wasn't nearly as strong as Baltimore's or Atlanta's: those two were top 5 in the league, easily. So both Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco had much better ground games to take the pressure off, and they both had MUCH better protection, to boot. I think what Cassel did was pretty impressive, and I think the Pats' adjustments over the course of the season provide a pretty clear roadmap for how the Chiefs can get the best possible performance out of him. I'll be surprised if he's not at least in the middle of the pack among starting QBs next year.

 

[defiantgiant]

Agreed. You look at Atlanta and Baltimore, each starting rookies, and you find a direct opposite situation to what Cassel had. Each had strong OLs and a strong ground game. In such a situation, a lot of pressure is taken off the QB. Those two QBs didn't have the elite targets to work w/, but also faced less pass rush and had more time in the pocket. Cassel on the other hand had more weapons, but regardless, had to make quicker decisions and did so w/ a lot more weight on his shoulders.

 

I swear, when talking about this, it remeinds me of our teams some years ago. Minny had Culpepper starting his first season (though I think it was actually his 2nd NFL season). That year, Minny often went w/ a max protetion and pounded the ball. Culpepper had great targets, but even w/ that, Minny knew the key was protecting the QB and allowing the young QB time to make his reads/decisions and get rid of the ball. The result was a very successful season for Culpepper and their offense.

 

In contrast, look how we used Cade McNown when he was still very green. Understand, I am not saying Cade was better than he showed, or that he could have ever been a good NFL QB. But it still hacks me off today when I think about how we used him. Under Crowton, we put Cade in what I would consider an impossible situation for a young QB. We spread it out, often even going w/ an empty backfield. We relied heavily on the pass, rather than running the ball more often to take pressure off the QB. Cade may have had weapons to work w/, but what he didn't have was time. W/o the protection, defenses simply tee'd off on Cade and he proved incapable of making the quick decisions. Again, I am not trying to defend Cade, but at the same time, I believe we went w/ about as bad of a scheme as possible considering the youth and inexperience of our QB.

 

Yeah, I think you're exactly right. The biggest stumbling block for most young QBs seems to be making progressive reads and doing so quickly. If you're starting a rookie QB or a young guy with no starting experience, you need to limit his reads, give him more time to make them, or (if possible) both. Certainly the Pats gave Cassel less time, but they also asked him to make more complicated reads: I think the superior weapons around Cassel arguably made his performance MORE impressive, rather than less.

 

In a way, I think the Ravens and Falcons benefited from each only having one really good WR. That "lack of weapons" meant that Ryan and Flacco could get away with locking in on their respective #1 guys (Roddy White in Atlanta and Derrick Mason in Baltimore) if they were struggling to progress through their reads, since their teams' passing attacks probably would have been feeding those two guys the ball anyway. Sure, Michael Jenkins and Mark Clayton aren't terrible, but neither team loses TOO much if the QB goes straight from his #1 read to a checkdown pass to the running back or whoever's acting as the last read.

 

The Patriots' system, meanwhile, features both Welker and Moss heavily. That means their QB needs to progress through his reads on both guys before checking down. Since both guys are elite talents and crucial to the Pats' offense working, forcing the ball to just one of them is worse for the Pats than it would be for the Falcons or Ravens.

 

The Pats gave Cassel two elite talents to work with, but that meant he was responsible for distributing the ball to both of them. This is another way in which I think he'll have an easier situation in Kansas City: like Atlanta and Baltimore last year, KC has a clear-cut #1 guy (Dwayne Bowe) and just-OK guys at #2 and #3. Consequently, it won't hurt them too much if Cassel occasionally forces the ball to Bowe or dumps off to Larry Johnson instead of making his reads on Mark Bradley/Bobby Engram. That should take some of the pressure off Cassel and allow him to develop his decision-making more comfortably.

[madlithuanian]

I'm not sure why these coordinators need such defending, but...

 

I'll give you Mangini may have had some success. But it's pretty clear to me that Wiess and Crennell are falling quite short of expectations. Lesser hyped HC's have done a lot more with less. Usually most HC's do not go into kick butt teams ready to go to the playoffs. They usually land on teams in dire straits.

 

Crennell didn't do anything in Cleveland. I expected at least some oomph on D, and there was nothing of the sort.

 

Wiess had a nice first year, but I'm just not seeing this great job you're seeing. After Quinn left, I see remote awesomeness in the offense department.

 

Overall, I think my assertion holds true...the hyped up staff under Billicheck have not performed well to date after getting out from his umbrella. McDaniels seems next in line. If he's not ready for the job, he shouldn't have sought it. So, if he fails or succeeds, it's on him. So far, so bad.

 

 

ok, i have to defend my boys...Crennel was coaching a horrible Browns team, so no way he could turn that turd organization around. Mangini was in the same boat. The Jets are terrible and only until now with Ryan have they went out and spent the money on so good players. Now Mangini is stuck with the Browns. Does not bode well for him again. Weis is doing a great job at Notre Dame and i dont know why people cant see that.

 

The only fault McDaniels has is he is too young and not ready to be a HC.

 

[madlithuanian]

I hear ya.

 

I keep thinking of Buddy Ryan. Brilliant D coordinator. Not so brilliant HC.

 

You are right on Weiss. I live near South Bend, so whether your an Irish Fan or not during the season that about all you hear about. All home games are televised 2 to 3 times... once live and two times shortened broadcasts. As an Irish fan Weiss' arrogance, self importance, and know it all attitude has run it's course and I've grown tired of it especially given the less than stellar results on the field and the excuses. This year is likely his put up or shut up year. If Notre Dame has another bad season he will be gone. As clueless as ND"s AD is they are smart enough to realize that they will be lynched if they retain him after yet another disappointing season.

 

Just because they studied under a successful Coach does not make them capable of leading a team as a head coach. Rod Marinelli was and is a hell of a defensive position coach he sucked as a head coach. While it doesn't hurt their chances it doesn't grantee they will be good on their own. McDaniels could very well ruin that team for the forceable future the longer he's there. Once you loose your team, look out.. everyone starts heading for the life boats and the ss titanic is left to sink. Whether he realizes it or not Josh has knocked over the first few dominos and the longer he keeps it up the more damage he'll do. Too bad it is an AFC team that we rarely face and not a bitter NFC rival. That could make it far more entertaining. Though we do have Detroit which is perennially melting down and will have to do for cheep entertainment.