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promomasterj
Lots of overpaying - Brock Osweiler anyone? The owners can't help themselves and continue to create a league with 2 salary tiers - massive veteran contract and rookie wage scale. There's not much middle ground anymore.
that's what I worry about. Even 1 year of above average production and someone will float him a massive deal. Just like we did with Jared Cook.
There are quite a few players signing reasonable contracts. I think the perception of rampant overpaying is overstated. The perception that there are only two salary tiers is also pretty common. However, in digging deeper and looking at contracts, I find that the reality doesn’t match the perception.
The top LT contracts are in the $12 - $13.6 mil. range. Take a look at a few recent signings around the league:
The first 4 names on the list are listed on Spotrac.net as comparables for GRob.
Donald Stephenson – $4.666 mil./year in 2016
Donald Penn – $5.95 mil./year in 2016
Marcus Cannon – $4.5 mil./year in 2015
Ryan Clady - $6 mil./year in 2016
Jered Veldeer – $7 mil./year in 2014 --- solid producing vet and contract signed at a time when the top contract was $12 mil.
Michael Oher – 7.2 mil./year in 2016
Kelvin Beachum – 9 mil./year in 2016
There clearly is a tier of veteran salaries that doesn’t even approach the top end vet contracts. If you go look around on Spotrac.net and Overthecap.com, you will find that there is still plenty of middle ground. And from an economics standpoint, there really are not enough salary cap dollars to overpay EVERYONE so some vets will be forced to sign at bargain prices.
My bet is that one year of above average production would get GRob in the Kelvin Beachum territory at most. But most likely it will be less.
Worst case, even if someone is stupid and overpays GRob with a massive contract that the Rams are not willing to match, there will be other LTs who they can sign to a reasonable contract.
