[News] Late For Work 3/2: Third Option With Mike Wallace Few People Are Talking About

[BR News]

Salary cap officially set. Will Ravens have three more holes to fill? Ravens’ ‘competitive offer’ to free agents brings back memories of Kelechi Osemele. Browns don’t franchise Terrelle Pryor. Michael Oher still in concussion protocol. Two more years of James Harrison for Ronnie Stanley.

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[whobilly]

Considering Wallace is our ONLY proven WR on the roster I hope we keep him. On another note, Williams and Wagner will go to whatever team offers the most money. That's easy to figure out. Translated.....both will be gone.

[TheRavengers]

Wallace is our only consistently good receiver, so him staying should be a no-brainer.

[RaRaRavens]

Wouldn't mind resigning Wallace to multi year deal with reasonable cap number. He showed he can still take it to the house. And we need the veteran presence, now more than ever.

Now only if Flacco would throw to anyone else other than Pitta, that'd be great.

[rmcjacket23]

Wouldn't mind resigning Wallace to multi year deal with reasonable cap number. He showed he can still take it to the house. And we need the veteran presence, now more than ever.

Now only if Flacco would throw to anyone else other than Pitta, that'd be great.

Partial myth of course, considering Pitta had a grand total of 2 more targets the entire season than Wallace did. Steve Smith also saw more than 100 targets as well.

Just so we are all clear on how pretty balanced we were in this regard:

Pitta: 7.4 targets/game
Wallace: 7.3 targets/game
SSS: 6.4 targets/game
Perriman: 4.1 targets/game
Aiken: 3.1 targets/game

Pretty standard I would say if you looked at most teams around the league. You've got 2-3 players that dominate your targets, and then some situational role players.

[Halshayeji]

1- Wallace getting cut was never a realistic option. If the Ravens ever wanted to part ways then trading him made a lot more sense than streight up cutting your only 1000 yard receiver. 

2- Congrats Stanley, you got 4 more chances to set the record with Harrison. I hope you eat him alive before he retires. 

3- zach Orr:- no the honor and pleasure was ours to watch you blossom into a pro bowl callibar player. thank you for being such a classy guy and good luck

4- Oher Concussion sucks! Wish him nothing but the best. Maybe it's time to seriously think about your future as you've already made a nice amount and succeeded at the highest level

[JD08]

It's sad about Oher, but don't really care to see reports on him...hated that we picked him since the moment it happened, was glad to see him leave

[Tdot.to.Bmore]

Sitting here patiently waiting for the first round of cuts. Its taking longer than expected.

[Chuckx999]

It's just another sad season. Let them all walk and start drafting smart or should I say much smarter than the past 4-5 years.
Draft TE Howard, a LB from Ala., a CB from ANYWHERE who can start. A good O lineman and a RB would be good start. As a 8 and 8 team we will need 2-3 years to rebuild. By then we can cut "old 3 and out Flacco" and draft a QB.

TRADE UP as much as possable to get GOOD players, not the benchwarmers Ozzie has picked the past 4-5 years.

[bigcatfrank1]

The Ravens need to decide who they are going to cut, they may have an idea already.

I have a question for you more senior or knowledgeable fanatics;
Does the cap amount govern the team at ALL times during the player selection process?
As an example; if Wagner becomes a free Agent, does his salary move OFF of the Ravens ledger until he is picked up either by the Ravens or another team?

another example; what if the Ravens want to let Dummervil go, does his salary count prior to June 1 if released sooner, since that is the date that a "veteran" can be released?

Or are the teams locked to ALL salaries regardless of date and FA status?
Its a complicated game for sure.
Anyone?

[RavensDieHard21]

I love our cap situation! Where is it even being spent? I don't need an article though, I'm well aware lmao 

Look on offense. You have Flacco as the highest cap hit in the league. Hands and Wallace getting paid good money and two past their prime TEs getting nice cash too. Nothing crazy though, we have no elite RB or WR contracts. 

On defense you have Jimmy, Weddle, Webb, Suggs, and Doom getting paid. The rest? Mosley and Jernigan both coming out of rookie deals next year, unless we 5th year option Mosley. 

The guise is that we have so much dead money still counting against the cap and we literally have little breathing room to improve the team. FO is to blame there. Homers there isn't much to explain there besides we need to make a huge difference with this draft class.

[rmcjacket23]

The Ravens need to decide who they are going to cut, they may have an idea already.

I have a question for you more senior or knowledgeable fanatics;
Does the cap amount govern the team at ALL times during the player selection process?
As an example; if Wagner becomes a free Agent, does his salary move OFF of the Ravens ledger until he is picked up either by the Ravens or another team?

another example; what if the Ravens want to let Dummervil go, does his salary count prior to June 1 if released sooner, since that is the date that a "veteran" can be released?

Or are the teams locked to ALL salaries regardless of date and FA status?
Its a complicated game for sure.
Anyone?

The salary cap reflects players who are currently under contract with the team for the 2017 season. Wagner has no contract with the Ravens for 2017, so he counts nothing against the cap right now.

If they resign him, then his new comp will be added to the salary cap.

When we cut a player, the dead money stays on the books for the current year, and the remainder is wiped off the salary cap.

So for Dumervil, he currently counts $8.4M against the salary cap. If he's released prior to June 1, $2.4M is dead money, so that will stay on the Ravens salary cap, and the remaining $6M will come off. So, effectively, our total cap obligation decreases by effectively $6M if he's released prior to June 1st.

[rmcjacket23]

Sitting here patiently waiting for the first round of cuts. Its taking longer than expected.

Not really. We usually don't do a whole cut of cuts early in this process. Would expect to maybe see some later this week or over the weekend, but most will probably drag into next week.

Technically speaking, even after our ERFA and RFAs are tendered, we will still be under the salary cap requirement, so we technically don't have to cut anybody prior to the beginning of FA if we don't want to.

We could wait until we get agreements to sign other FAs before we cut anybody.

[Obie]

Man, we have got to let joe go, resign him for 1/2, or less , than what he makes, we need to keep what good players we have, sad state of affairs signing him to that sb contract, should have waited a few years, would have gotten him real cheap, maybe another cousins, ha ha ha

[Ravenous_Ravens]

I love our cap situation! Where is it even being spent? I don't need an article though, I'm well aware lmao 

Look on offense. You have Flacco as the highest cap hit in the league. Hands and Wallace getting paid good money and two past their prime TEs getting nice cash too. Nothing crazy though, we have no elite RB or WR contracts. 

On defense you have Jimmy, Weddle, Webb, Suggs, and Doom getting paid. The rest? Mosley and Jernigan both coming out of rookie deals next year, unless we 5th year option Mosley. 

The guise is that we have so much dead money still counting against the cap and we literally have little breathing room to improve the team. FO is to blame there. Homers there isn't much to explain there besides we need to make a huge difference with this draft class.

Yes, the dead money has been an issue for sure. Although I wouldn't be so quick to say it is all the FO's doing. There was the Ray Rice incident and numerous injuries over several seasons, which compounded that issue considerably. At this juncture though, the Ravens are almost past all that dead money pileup. In some ways, although it tied hands, it occurred in a rather choice time, when the team needed to get younger anyways. The situation really enforced going this direction. Come next year when they will need to sign up and comers to second contracts, they should be a in good position to do so.

My only request of the FO is that make more team friendly contracts, as far as when players are injured. It does not seem right to be paying out near full dollars when you don't get close to the value. Players deserve to still be paid even if injured for sacrificing their bodies/health, but if contracts are paid out mostly based on production then there is some adequate relief in the event a player cannot contribute. Have a reasonable base amount, no matter what, then escalators for production. Some would be the typical do the basics (very realistic goals to meet) and others would be hitting certain performance points above and beyond. Only neg I can think of, with limited knowledge, is it may be a bit difficult to project what you pay out until later in the season.

I also think perhaps Webb's contract may be renegotiated, for playing safety and not corner. I anticipated it happening last year, but it seems they gave him a chance to show how he fares at a new position. He did play well but IMHO his numbers are a bit high based on production. Thinking a slight adjustment is in order.

[rmcjacket23]

Man, we have got to let joe go, resign him for 1/2, or less , than what he makes, we need to keep what good players we have, sad state of affairs signing him to that sb contract, should have waited a few years, would have gotten him real cheap, maybe another cousins, ha ha ha

This is naive, and you definitely don't understand the QB market.

[rmcjacket23]

I love our cap situation! Where is it even being spent? I don't need an article though, I'm well aware lmao 

Look on offense. You have Flacco as the highest cap hit in the league. Hands and Wallace getting paid good money and two past their prime TEs getting nice cash too. Nothing crazy though, we have no elite RB or WR contracts. 

On defense you have Jimmy, Weddle, Webb, Suggs, and Doom getting paid. The rest? Mosley and Jernigan both coming out of rookie deals next year, unless we 5th year option Mosley. 

The guise is that we have so much dead money still counting against the cap and we literally have little breathing room to improve the team. FO is to blame there. Homers there isn't much to explain there besides we need to make a huge difference with this draft class.

1. Watson isn't making good money.

2. The dead money, while also largely irrelevant, hasn't really been that high for the Ravens. We were middle of the pack last season in dead money, and are most years as well.

Really isn't much correlation between team success and dead money. There's a bunch of playoff teams who have a lot of dead money (both NE and ATL had more dead money than us last year), and there's a bunch of playoff teams who had very little dead money. Same thing applies to teams with very little dead money... some are good, some are terrible.

If you actually wanted to look at positional spending, here's how the 2016 Ravens broke down:

Offense and Defense were relatively equal spending... $62.4M spent on Offense, $61.0M spent on defense

Position breakdown:

Secondary: $32.1M... this is a problem, given that the unit wasn't very good
QB: $24M... Joe, obviously
Linebackers: $21.2M... not necessarily bad, though most of this was on OLBs, and we didn't have a great pass rush
Oline: $18M... not an unreasonable number I don't think.
WR: $13.5M... again, not an unreasonable number

All other positions take up less than $10M of the salary cap combined, so your TEs, RBs, and Dline all played last season pretty cheaply in terms of cap space used.

So your key areas of spending that didn't seem to correlate with success was in the Secondary and at OLB.

Looking forward to 2017, here are the current breakdowns:

Secondary: $38.4M... basically the same unit as last year, which wasn't great, and now costs $6M more. Not a good thing. Accounts for roughly 25% of total cap spending for a unit that's probably among the weakest on the team.

Linebackers: $22.4M... again, basically same unit as last season (less Orr), and not a highly productive OLB core.

In fact, look at it this way:

Secondary, OLB, and WR. Those three "units" of the team are arguably the three biggest areas of need on this team going in 2017, and they represent about 40% of our total cap spending.

That, ladies and gentleman, is the problem.

Luckily, there are some moves to be made there that can cut that spending and add some players that will help out.

[Ravensfolyfe]

Try and keep Mike Wallace we need all the veteran help we can get.

[bioLarzen]

Man, we have got to let joe go, resign him for 1/2, or less , than what he makes, we need to keep what good players we have, sad state of affairs signing him to that sb contract, should have waited a few years, would have gotten him real cheap, maybe another cousins, ha ha ha

If you cut Flacco, he'll have a new job in about 10 seconds.
And not in Baltimore.

[Ravens8383]

  2 hours ago, Obie said:

Man, we have got to let joe go, resign him for 1/2, or less , than what he makes, we need to keep what good players we have, sad state of affairs signing him to that sb contract, should have waited a few years, would have gotten him real cheap, maybe another cousins, ha ha ha

If you cut Flacco, he'll have a new job in about 10 seconds.
And not in Baltimore.

Browns, Bills, Bears, and a few others would give him everything they had. People don't understand that the Ravens could be searching for a QB for the next 5 years if he goes.

[robbie29]

  4 hours ago, Obie said:

Man, we have got to let joe go, resign him for 1/2, or less , than what he makes, we need to keep what good players we have, sad state of affairs signing him to that sb contract, should have waited a few years, would have gotten him real cheap, maybe another cousins, ha ha ha

If you cut Flacco, he'll have a new job in about 10 seconds.
And not in Baltimore.

Yeah, Ottawa or Saskatchewan would take him in a heartbeat.

[RavensDieHard21]

4 hours ago, rmcjacket23 said:

1. Watson isn't making good money.

2. The dead money, while also largely irrelevant, hasn't really been that high for the Ravens. We were middle of the pack last season in dead money, and are most years as well.

Really isn't much correlation between team success and dead money. There's a bunch of playoff teams who have a lot of dead money (both NE and ATL had more dead money than us last year), and there's a bunch of playoff teams who had very little dead money. Same thing applies to teams with very little dead money... some are good, some are terrible.

If you actually wanted to look at positional spending, here's how the 2016 Ravens broke down:

Offense and Defense were relatively equal spending... $62.4M spent on Offense, $61.0M spent on defense

Position breakdown:

Secondary: $32.1M... this is a problem, given that the unit wasn't very good
QB: $24M... Joe, obviously
Linebackers: $21.2M... not necessarily bad, though most of this was on OLBs, and we didn't have a great pass rush
Oline: $18M... not an unreasonable number I don't think.
WR: $13.5M... again, not an unreasonable number

All other positions take up less than $10M of the salary cap combined, so your TEs, RBs, and Dline all played last season pretty cheaply in terms of cap space used.

So your key areas of spending that didn't seem to correlate with success was in the Secondary and at OLB.

Looking forward to 2017, here are the current breakdowns:

Secondary: $38.4M... basically the same unit as last year, which wasn't great, and now costs $6M more. Not a good thing. Accounts for roughly 25% of total cap spending for a unit that's probably among the weakest on the team.

Linebackers: $22.4M... again, basically same unit as last season (less Orr), and not a highly productive OLB core.

In fact, look at it this way:

Secondary, OLB, and WR. Those three "units" of the team are arguably the three biggest areas of need on this team going in 2017, and they represent about 40% of our total cap spending.

That, ladies and gentleman, is the problem.

Luckily, there are some moves to be made there that can cut that spending and add some players that will help out.


 

Well put. Strategically broken down. We need to trim the fat and move on with younger guys and hope we knock the draft out if the park. Doom is likely gone, same goes for Wright, Arrington, Lewis and probably Pitta and Watson as well. 

[usmccharles]

3 hours ago, bioLarzen said:

If you cut Flacco, he'll have a new job in about 10 seconds.
And not in Baltimore.

Its pointless even addressing people who suggest that.  I mean, isnt it 47mill in dead money?  Makes no sense...yet these ignorant people want to post that.  I would be curious what is the biggest amount of dead money a team has ever willingly accepted by cutting a player.  For some reason i feel like @rmcjacket23 would know this

[BigUgly]

Man, we have got to let joe go, resign him for 1/2, or less , than what he makes, we need to keep what good players we have, sad state of affairs signing him to that sb contract, should have waited a few years, would have gotten him real cheap, maybe another cousins, ha ha ha

Yeah, I'm sure the Skins were thinking about Joe and his contract when they slapped the tag on Cousins for the second straight year. He certainly isn't the best QB in the league, and not worth the $25M the tag will give him this year, but that's the price the Skins will pay to avoid a long term commitment.

This will blow up in their face, as Cousins will be traded this year or walk the next, and leave the Skins in the exact same boat they have been in for most of the last few decades - uncertainty at QB.

The point is, you have to pay a QB what the market will bear, and stability (in terms of performance and health) carries a bit of a premium.

[sizzlingdoom]

  13 hours ago, rmcjacket23 said:

1. Watson isn't making good money.

2. The dead money, while also largely irrelevant, hasn't really been that high for the Ravens. We were middle of the pack last season in dead money, and are most years as well.

Really isn't much correlation between team success and dead money. There's a bunch of playoff teams who have a lot of dead money (both NE and ATL had more dead money than us last year), and there's a bunch of playoff teams who had very little dead money. Same thing applies to teams with very little dead money... some are good, some are terrible.

If you actually wanted to look at positional spending, here's how the 2016 Ravens broke down:

Offense and Defense were relatively equal spending... $62.4M spent on Offense, $61.0M spent on defense

Position breakdown:

Secondary: $32.1M... this is a problem, given that the unit wasn't very good
QB: $24M... Joe, obviously
Linebackers: $21.2M... not necessarily bad, though most of this was on OLBs, and we didn't have a great pass rush
Oline: $18M... not an unreasonable number I don't think.
WR: $13.5M... again, not an unreasonable number

All other positions take up less than $10M of the salary cap combined, so your TEs, RBs, and Dline all played last season pretty cheaply in terms of cap space used.

So your key areas of spending that didn't seem to correlate with success was in the Secondary and at OLB.

Looking forward to 2017, here are the current breakdowns:

Secondary: $38.4M... basically the same unit as last year, which wasn't great, and now costs $6M more. Not a good thing. Accounts for roughly 25% of total cap spending for a unit that's probably among the weakest on the team.

Linebackers: $22.4M... again, basically same unit as last season (less Orr), and not a highly productive OLB core.

In fact, look at it this way:

Secondary, OLB, and WR. Those three "units" of the team are arguably the three biggest areas of need on this team going in 2017, and they represent about 40% of our total cap spending.

That, ladies and gentleman, is the problem.

Luckily, there are some moves to be made there that can cut that spending and add some players that will help out.


 

Well put. Strategically broken down. We need to trim the fat and move on with younger guys and hope we knock the draft out if the park. Doom is likely gone, same goes for Wright, Arrington, Lewis and probably Pitta and Watson as well. 

We Seriously need to move on from Pitta and Watson. Hard to really blame the Watson signing....nut is 100% time to move on from both.
I would also definitely be done with Juice, Guy, Aiken, WRIGHT, Elam, Arrington, Lewis, Zuttah, and maybe a couple others.
Nutty offseason coming up

[purpledown]

I believe this will be the last year for Harbaugh and the front office. They have to go in a different direction. Losing free agents and not replacing them has worn thin. Another season with no play offs and moves will have to be made.