[News] Late For Work 6/18: Predicting 2015 Starting Offense

[harfordravenfan]

There should b an award and or 1 pro bowl spot a yr for udfa

For the best udfa of the year i may add

Good thought but just another chance for a raven to be overlooked

[rmcjacket23]

@BmoreFanatic wait a minute you are confusing me you saying that we shouldn't extend either K.O. or Yanda even if we have the chance because of Joe contract. I thought extending either K.O. or Yanda would free up cap space and if Joe doesn't re-negotiate his contract there still no way that Ozzie would trade him. I don't understand what your saying.

Extending KO won't free up any cap space at all... it will greatly increase it in his case. His current cap hit is roughly $1M, and signing him to an extension would probably guarantee that increases to $3-4M this season. Its possible extending Yanda this season would reduce his cap hit from roughly $8.5M, but it wouldn't be a significant reduction... probably down to $5-6M or so. We don't really need the cap space for 2015 anyway.

 

The problem is that neither is under contract for 2016 currently. As projected, after signing draft picks and tenders, we're probably looking at $15M in cap space next offseason at the present time. Moves can be made to open up some space, but Yanda and Osemele alone could eat up most of that.

 

The other thing that fans struggle to consider is the LONG-TERM aspect of the contract. We can't just sign a player because we can afford the cap hit in that season... we have to make sure we can sign the player AND withstand a likely escalating cap hit for the 3-4 seasons after that at least. A guy like Wagner is heading into the third year of his four year deal, and if he's healthy and performs like he did last season, he's looking at a possible nice payday potentially in 2016-2017. Do we know that we can afford that?

 

Bottom line... you've got to pick your spots. The FO does a world-class job of analyzing cap spaces for multiple years in advance, and they aren't going to resign both of these guards and be forced to cut some starting or key players a year or two from now because those contracts have increased in cap hit, which contracts typically do.

 

Frankly, it could be as simple as... do you want to pay two guards top tier money or would you rather pay a guard and a RT top tier money? Reasonable choice we might have to make come next offseason. Given our great history of drafting mid-round guards and turning them into studs, and considering we have a couple potential guards who could be pretty good on our roster right now, I'd rather have the stud RT.

[mearzunkies]

IMO Flacco will have the day in whether or not we can keep both Osemele and Yanda. He needs a good restructure for that to happen!!!

[hen826957]

@rmcjacket23 Well, I wasn't worried about the cap space for 2015 I'm worried about hoping to extend one of those guards before both of them hit free agency before 2016. So like you said if we extend K.O. this year than his cap number would increase right, well we pretty much finish our roster so 3-4M increase would not hurt to keep him off the market for next season and beyond or they choose even Yanda. So I see no reason why they can't extend one of those guards before next season if they can't afford both then all well put Urschal at guard.

[RRRRRavens]

Does anybody know how often punt and kick returners actually do get injured? I mean by the actual statistics how dangerous is the position?

[RRRRRavens]

Agreed. What is really hilarious to me is how all the "experts" always had Jim ahead of John in the rankings even though John beat him each time we played them, not to mention beating him in the SuperBowl. Now look at what has happened to Jim, back to college and really not a good word being spoken about him from either players or management. John has always been "The Man"!

Makes me feel kinda sad for John's brother Jim.  Must be hard on John too since I know he cares for his brother.

[RRRRRavens]

Entirely possible he won't. New OC, largely inexperienced/unproven WR/TE core.

 

For some perspective, Flacco essentially had a "career" season last year... highest number of yardage, most TDs, least amount of turnovers in a single season his career.

 

That made him the 11th best fantasy QB across most leagues. From a fantasy perspective, he's got pretty much ZERO shot of being a top 5 QB, and even with career numbers, he would struggle to finish inside the top 10.

The stats seem to imply that the team's ability to keep Joe harassment free while in the pocket will be a far greater influence on his ability to perform than whoever is on the receiving end of his passes.

[RRRRRavens]

You can win a Lombardi with a good offense, a good defense and mediocre return game. DO NOT PUT WEBBY OR JIMMY BACK THERE. So not worth the risk. Webb has one punt returned for a touchdown in his career. He isn't all of a sudden going to turn into Jacoby Jones for us. LOOK ELSEWHERE.

You're probably right so this isn't a critique of your logic.  But I do recall that ironically we won our last Lombardi critically because JJ returned the opening second half kickoff for a TD. 

[Dorota]

Makes me feel kinda sad for John's brother Jim.  Must be hard on John too since I know he cares for his brother.

It is sad. John is definitely the better coach in the long run. But I'll be rooting for Jim this season too. I think Jim is better suited for college, where he can dazzle players, but not work with them for so long that he wears on them. He's done well so far with recruiting. I think this season for Michigan will be a definite improvement over past years with Brady Hoke, who was a nice fella, but a bad coach.

 

Also, I don't think college football is a fail over NFL. Jim will be best suited now to help prepare his players for what awaits them in the NFL. He will have an opportunity to affect lives. And develop players.

[ravenstime]

NO WAY to using Webb as a punt returner. I mean a fair catch is one thing, but he is already injury prone; why would we want to see him with another injury. There's a few other very capable guys, including Campanaro, who is expendable, compared to Webby. I don't want to see Camp with another injury, because he is injury prone, too, after all, but I wouldn't put Webb or Steve Smith Sr. back there for sure. Maybe Asa or Campanaro or some other back-up.

[NNITRED]

Osemele is all but certain to cash out next year but the upside is that he's going to play like a beast to boost his stock even further.