FA and it's impact on the Steelers

As usual the Steelers didn't make any splash moves but there's a lot we can learn from the first days of FA.

Big winner so far: Le'Veon Bell
Like it or not, but Bell is getting what he wants. With some of the contracts of the past couple of days his demands suddenly seem justified. He said he was going to reset the running back market and it already is happening. If a player like Jerick McKinnon (raise your hand if you've heard of him before FA) is set to make 30M in 4 years and 12M guaranteed this year, the top RB's will make the money Bell is asking right now. McKinnon's stats: 570 yards (3.8 per game), 51 catches for 421 yards and 5 total TD's. Dual threat RB's are going to get paid in the future. Teams will have the choice: either pay a veteran QB or draft a new one. Even the Patriots** have decided to pay one of their RB's: Rex Burkhead got a 3 year contract with most of it guaranteed. It wouldn't surprise me if a team with a lot of cap space is going to pay Bell 18M a year when he's hitting FA next year.

Another big contract that's not only impacting the Steelers but the entire NFL is Cousins' contract. It's fully guaranteed so you can expect other QB's and players demanding the same in the future. Personally I hate to see this happen. Certain players will get lazy and will only give their best effort when it suits them. You can see this in the NBA.

A lot of ILB that the Steelers might be interested in are already gone and for a lot of money: Nigel Bradham, Avery Williamson, Demario davis and Anthony Hitchens. Still left: Zach Brown, Preston Brown and Tahir Whitehead. But it doesn't bode well that a mediocre player like Hitchens is getting 9M a year. Another player that the Steelers might target is Mychal Kendricks. The Eagles have resigned Bradham so they're planning to trade Kendricks. Our late 5th round pick might be enough to get him. He's set to earn 6M this year, but that will be cheaper than signing him as a FA (or another FA of his level).

While a lot of players have gotten big contracts, all of the better safeties are somehow still available: Tre Boston, Kenny Vaccaro, Eric Reid, Morgan Burnett and Tyrann Mathieu. Let's hope it stays that way for a while and that the Steelers manage to get someone at some kind of burgain in a couple of weeks.

What have our rivals done so far?

The Browns with all their cap space have done some good and bad deals. Outside of Carlos Hyde no really big names but they've addressed some positions like CB where they were really weak. But the biggest news is of course the retirement of Joe Thomas. This leaves a big hole at LT and it won't be easy to fix that this year. Not in FA and not in the draft. Maybe a trade?

That's what the Bengals did with trading for Cordy Glenn and not giving up much. They had a lot of problems with their O-line last season and Glenn will be able to protect Dalton better. If Glenn is healthy of course which is his biggest issue.

And finally the Ravens. They've addressed the position they needed to address: WR. Or at least they tried...
First they signed John Brown for 5M for 1 year. Ok, I get that. He's often injured but at least he has some talent and you never know he can stay healthy for a year.
But then they signed Ryan Grant (WHO???) for 29M for 4 year, 50% guaranteed. His stats: 84 receptions for 985 yards and 6 TD's... in 4 years. Sounds like Eli Rogers to me. Imagine someone giving that contract to Eli
This must be the Ravens worst signing ever Seems like they really know how to evaluate the WR position. I know they're bad at drafting one, but it's hilarious they're fucking up FA now too
On top of that they resigned James Hurst, one of the worst O-line players in the league for way too much money and 8M guaranteed. It looks like the Ravens are trying to challenge the Browns

We laugh at the Ravens but the truth is they're just driving up the market for tweeners. That's OK for us since we don't do much in FA anyway. I would like to see Tyrann Mathieu in a Steeler's uniform.

Do we ever really do big moves in FA? Besides Haden last year we never do much this time of year it’s not the Steeler way. I agree on possibly trying to snatch up Matthieu he would be a major improvement to the midfield.

Kirk Cousins 100 % guaranteed contract is a game changer

imo the Steelers will be picking up one of the Safety free agent and drafting one Steelers let go two Safeties.

hope the Steelers draft a good RB in this draft imo they can get one in the third round.

It's likely just wishful thinking, but still nice to think about Mathieu, and the some players want him too:

Steelers players recruit free agent safety Tyrann Mathieu

Forget about wining and dining free agents. Steelers players are in an all-out social media blitz to lure free agent safety Tyrann Mathieu.

Mathieu, who refused to take a pay cut to stay with Arizona, was released Wednesday, the first day of the new league year.

Defensive team captain Cameron Heyward tweeted at Mathieu Thursday morning and outside linebacker Keion Adams did the same Wednesday night, even going to the lengths of photo-shopping Mathieu into a Steelers uniform.....

http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/steelers/2018/03/15/Steelers-players-recruit-free-agent-safety-Tyrann-Mathieu-Cam-Heyward-Keion-Adams-J-J-Watt/stories/201803150120

Well the reason they wait. As that they are not big spenders. And they are more quality than quantity there.

Heard on the radio that the Steelers are serious players for Mathieu. He wants to go to a team with a winning culture, are serious about Defense, and have a rich culture on Defence.

Would be an excellent fit, but I am concerned about his injury problems.

colbert needs to end the madness of trying to please bell and sign the honey badger now !!!

signing bell = cap hell
they'll have to cut half the starters when it's time to extend ben. they'll have 30% of the cap tied up in bell, brown ,and ben. after rodgers blows the qb contracts up, thanks to the stupid deal they gave cousins , look for 30 mill a year for rodgers and ben. so figure about 60 million for ben,bell, and brown.

Pretty much stunned by some of the idiotic deals some teams have made for some of the players and positions out there.

I think before it's all over with the FO will regret not putting the non-exclusive on Bell.

Master_Of_Puppets wrote:

colbert needs to end the madness of trying to please bell and sign the honey badger now !!!

signing bell = cap hell
they'll have to cut half the starters when it's time to extend ben. they'll have 30% of the cap tied up in bell, brown ,and ben. after rodgers blows the qb contracts up, thanks to the stupid deal they gave cousins , look for 30 mill a year for rodgers and ben.  so figure about 60 million for ben,bell, and brown.

I agree with this thinking 100%. As much as I wanted a new contract, and Bell to stay a Steeler in the 2017 offseason, the Franchise tag is really crippling multiple positions now. For whatever it's worth I found Gerry Dulac's reply in his chat yesterday interesting:

Steelers_NJ: Hi Gerry- While not the Steelers way, can you see a situation where the Steelers pull back the tag on Bell if a stud ILB comes on the market like Mathieu did at Safety...or even for Mathieu? They could use that $15MM to upgrade 2 key positions and work from FA or the draft for RB.

Gerry Dulac: Absolutely I could

LambertWardSteel wrote:

Master_Of_Puppets wrote:

colbert needs to end the madness of trying to please bell and sign the honey badger now !!!

signing bell = cap hell
they'll have to cut half the starters when it's time to extend ben. they'll have 30% of the cap tied up in bell, brown ,and ben. after rodgers blows the qb contracts up, thanks to the stupid deal they gave cousins , look for 30 mill a year for rodgers and ben.  so figure about 60 million for ben,bell, and brown.

I agree with this thinking 100%. As much as I wanted a new contract, and Bell to stay a Steeler in the 2017 offseason, the Franchise tag is really crippling multiple positions now. For whatever it's worth I found Gerry Dulac's reply in his chat yesterday interesting:

Steelers_NJ: Hi Gerry- While not the Steelers way, can you see a situation where the Steelers pull back the tag on Bell if a stud ILB comes on the market like Mathieu did at Safety...or even for Mathieu? They could use that $15MM to upgrade 2 key positions and work from FA or the draft for RB.

Gerry Dulac: Absolutely I could

then lets git er done !!! i guess they're gonna piss around with bell until all the good FA's are gone.
i'm bettin that we have a repeat of last year , where bell waits till the week before the first game to show up , then suck for a month while counting his 14 million and play not to get hurt. cam sutton will be the new starting free safety , with the usual bums at back up, and old washed up lawrence timmons will be stinking it up next to average at best williams at LB.

Well, the Texans get Mathieu...you'd think the Steelers could have afforded the one year $7 million contract even with the Bell franchise....


http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/22800102/houston-texans-sign-former-arizona-cardinals-safety-tyrann-mathieu

I think they only have 6 million in cap space.

HONEY BADGER 1 YEARN $7 MIL, TEXANS

WTF??????

This thing with Bell is biting us in the ass. We miss out on a guy like Mathieu because Colbert and the powers to be want to assure Bell that they want to get a deal done. Go find your balls and call us in the morning.

I don't want to set my expectations too high, but with any luck, maybe the Steelers will sign a special teams guy this week. Or maybe a few camp bodies. A fan can dream.

Love being a Steeler fan when they do absolutely nothing

Honey Badger is an injury waiting to happen.

i just don't get it. they didn't bat an eye to let mike wallace go and hand his offer to AB. sure bell is more valuable than wallace was at the time , but they are so obsessed with keeping bell , they are even willing to let arguably the leagues best kicker walk.
we could have easily had 3 or 4 more L's in the losing column last year ,and you can bet your ass they'll calling on Bos to win more games in the future. and they risk losing him for all for a measily 1.5 or 2 million a year . if i were a GM of another team in need of a kicker i wouldn't bat an eye to give up a 2nd to increase my odds of winning.

effyou515 wrote:

Honey Badger is an injury waiting to happen.

so was/is joe haden , but they didn't hesitate to snatch him up.

colbert and tomlin are still high fiveing over getting hadden. but just as wally said, just when you think it's over ....BAM... steelers announce they signed a LB or safety who is a very good special teamer. you'll quickly google search the newest steeler and find out he was a 7th round pick from east carolina or some other obscure college and has been on 3 different teams practice squads and played in 6 games on special teams and had 8 tackles and a fumble recovery (SPLASH PLAY !!! )

rellimie wrote:

I think they only have 6 million in cap space.

Yeah, think you are right. I don't pretend to know all the nuances of the salary cap and NFL contracts, but it's my understanding they can structure things in a way like with bonuses to make it work.

I never let my hopes get high on any free agents. They never make big moves, and to an extent I like how the Steelers develop their own players. But I figured Mathieu would take $12-14 million to sign. It is really discouraging to see they could have filled a vacant position with an upper level player for as little as 7 million. Especially considering they cleaned the defensive backfield out this past week. If they had the same success drafting defensive backfield as they do WRs it wouldn't matter. But really tired of trying to patch things together every year with 3rd stringers that were released from other teams.

I absolutaly think Bell deserves the contract he's asking for but we weren't and aren't in the position to give him that contract. Not with all the needs we have on defense. Our offense is more than good enough with an above average RB instead of Bell. We just should have used the non-exclusive franchise tag. I'm pretty sure some desperate team with cap space would have offered 2 first round picks for him. And if not we could have rescind the tag (like the Panthers did with Josh Norman) before Bell signed the tag and let him go.

We currently have 6,5M in cap space, but does anyone know if the money for the draft signings are included or not. Because that's roughly 5M you need for those contracts. If not included that leaves us with only 1,5M in cap space at the moment.

Anyway here's a list of interesting LB's and safeties:
LB's: Zach Brown and Tahir Whitehead. Zach Brown probably out of reach.
S: Tre Boston, Kenny Vaccaro, Eric Reid, Morgan Burnett (all FA's) and Earl Thomas (trade). A lot of options I like and one of them can maybe obtained rather cheap.

Wallace108 wrote:

I don't want to set my expectations too high, but with any luck, maybe the Steelers will sign a special teams guy this week. Or maybe a few camp bodies. A fan can dream.

Source: Patriots** free agent Matthew Slater, a seven-time Pro Bowl special teamer, is in Pittsburgh visiting the Steelers today. Intrigue amongst top AFC teams.

— Field Yates (@FieldYates) March 17, 2018