you're right, yes you can

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AlbaNY_Ram
"You cannot make AD the highest paid defender and keep the other guys as well ..." The Rams most certainly can - and most likely will - make AD the highest paid defensive player in the NFL and keep Gurley, Peters, Cooks, Goff plus three or four other studs on the team. Zn has posted a number of times about how other teams allocate their caps to retain their key players and how the Rams can (and likely will) follow a similar path to retain their core players. I am surprised - no, make that stunned - that you have not stumbled across one of those posts before. With any luck zn will chime in again with the specifics of his analysis.

You;re right, AR, it's doable.

It does mean you can't keep em all but you don't need to keep em all.

The specifics are this. It has been shown that winning teams spend around 60% of their cap on a core of 10 players. I keep showing it can be 8 or 9 players. Right now for example the Rams spend 58.6% of their cap on 10 players.

By 2020 the cap ought to be 200 M (or a bit more). If so 60% of that is 120 M. With 120 M you can sign Donald, Goff, Cooks, Gurley, and Peters and have room for 3 more in the 7-9 M range.

All winning teams face this. The ones good with the cap AND good with personnel handle it.

Why keep Donald? The argument is, you keep a guy who gives you advantages. Analysis has shown that Donald BOTH attracts multiple blockers more than any other lineman, AND leads the league in qb pressures. That means he attracts more attention than anyone else (freeing up others) AND makes plays at a high rate ANYWAY.

Repeating for emphasis. Donald faced multiple blockers more than ANYONE ELSE (freeing up others) AND AT THE SAME TIME had more qb pressures than anyone else.

That's like getting a tremendous deal on a nice plot of land and then discovering gold on it.

What value do you put on that? It's because of Donald doing that that the Rams were 4th in sacks last year. They schemed around him to be 4th in sacks in spite of having no real edge rusher. Quinn was subpar most of the year, Ebukam was a rookie (rarely does a rookie pass rusher do anything), Longacre is an effort guy and played half the season with a bad back, and Barwin was on his way out.

Another thing about having a rare elite DT type is that it is FAR easier to find outside rushers than it is to find elite DTs. The last elite DT before Donald was probably Sapp. (Sapp was drafted in 95, AD in 2014. 20 years.) Yet last year out of the 35 guys with 8 or more sacks, only 3 were DTs (and the other 2 while good are not as good as Donald). That means that once you have an elite DT you CAN find an edge rusher, and then you have both. It doesn;t work the other way around.




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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/27/2018 04:03AM by zn.