NFL 2019 Super Bowl: the restless shade of Mike Martz

[Jace, Extat]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I just don't think that that's the big deal you're making it out to be. Saving $6m a year is cool and all, but it's more important that they dont pay ANYONE big money, ever. They hand out no major contracts to almost anyone. Brady by himself isn't as important as it is that they pay their top ten players way less in general. And that's the real steal - they get the Pats discount AND can get a crazy amount of depth. 

Compare with the Seahawks. Wilson is getting paid a lot more, but the real issue is that they have like 40% of their payroll in 10 players. Maybe even fewer. That makes their depth suffer tremendously. So when they're healthy, yay, but in football no one is ever healthy. 

No, the real issue of the Seahawks is that they're paying their top-3 QB $30 million a year and insist on run-run-pass on 3rd and 10- punt.

[DMC]

Well that's an entire different issue than the previous post.  Of course the Pats deserve credit for spending wisely.  Pretty much said that.  Point of all this to begin with was identifying any "caveat."

[Bronn Stone]

13 hours ago, DMC said:

 the conditional variable for why that is is Brady not insisting on being paid at market value.

That decision is made a whole lot easier by having a highly-compensated supermodel wife and a father who was a retired investment adviser who came out of retirement to manage his son's money.

[The Mother of The Others]

If the Saints staged a WWE style Superbowl Takeover and stormed the field in uniform before running off with the entire vast store of game balls so the game had to be forfeited, would that not constitute the greatest superbowl story of all time?

[Jace, Extat]

1 hour ago, The Mother of The Others said:

If the Saints staged a WWE style Superbowl Takeover and stormed the field in uniform before running off with the entire vast store of game balls so the game had to be forfeited, would that not constitute the greatest superbowl story of all time?

I'd be crying with pride and awe.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

It's only acceptable if the storming players wield maces and axes. Then I'm game. 

[The Mother of The Others]

 Over the loudspeaker:  "This is the commissioner.  Does anyone in the crowd have any balls?     We need all of your balls.    Surrender your balls now to save superbowl!"

[BigFatCoward]

16 hours ago, Bronn Stone said:

That decision is made a whole lot easier by having a highly-compensated supermodel wife and a father who was a retired investment adviser who came out of retirement to manage his son's money.

Getting paid a bit less than market value to ensure success and glory should have nothing to do with how much you have elsewhere, if you are on $50,000 getting paid $40,000 its a problem, gettting 15 million instead of 20 is an irrelevance.

[Bronn Stone]

11 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Getting paid a bit less than market value to ensure success and glory should have nothing to do with how much you have elsewhere, if you are on $50,000 getting paid $40,000 its a problem, gettting 15 million instead of 20 is an irrelevance.

Very, very few professional athletes think like that.  They are COMPETITIVE in all things, including salary.  It's far more about "I'm worth more than HIM, I can't settle for less".

[Week]

17 hours ago, Bronn Stone said:

Very, very few professional athletes think like that.  They are COMPETITIVE in all things, including salary.  It's far more about "I'm worth more than HIM, I can't settle for less".

This and the union is loath to allow any big name players to sign "below market" deals. For whatever reason, Brady is not beholden to the union in this way that a lot of other players are.

[Bronn Stone]

1 hour ago, Week said:

This and the union is loath to allow any big name players to sign "below market" deals. For whatever reason, Brady is not beholden to the union in this way that a lot of other players are.

Excellent point.  Brady is pretty solidly GOP at heart.

[Cas Stark]

45 minutes ago, Bronn Stone said:

Excellent point.  Brady is pretty solidly GOP at heart.

Yeah, I'm sure it's Brady's anti-union GOP belief system, and not his willingness to sacrifice money in his own pocket in order to win.

[Rockroi]

On 1/29/2019 at 12:59 AM, Kalbear said:

Compare with the Seahawks. Wilson is getting paid a lot more, but the real issue is that they have like 40% of their payroll in 10 players. Maybe even fewer. That makes their depth suffer tremendously. So when they're healthy, yay, but in football no one is ever healthy. 

This is demonstrably untrue.  

For starters- and to back kal's point- Wilson and Brady have almost identical cap hit.  - Wilson is $23M; Brady $22Mil.  But otherwise?  The Pats have more money tied up in their Top 10 paid players than the Seahawks:

Russell Wilson    $23,786,666     13.38% of cap
Bobby Wagner   $13,600,000     7.65
Doug Baldwin    $11,800,000     6.64
Duane Brown       $8,250,000     4.64
K.J. Wright            $8,200,000     4.61
Justin Britt            $6,166,666     3.47
Tyler Lockett          $4,446,688     2.5
Bradley McDougald    $3,333,333     1.88
Justin Coleman       $2,914,000     1.64
Shamar Stephen     $2,581,250     1.45
TOTAL:                     $85,078,603     47.86% of cap

Tom Brady             $22,000,000     12.21
Devin McCourty    $11,935,000     6.62
Rob Gronkowski    $10,859,375     6.03
Dont'a Hightower   $9,695,305     5.38
Stephon Gilmore    $8,887,500     4.93
Marcus Cannon      $5,956,250     3.31
Stephen Gostkowski    $5,000,000 2.77
Julian Edelman        $4,071,078     2.26
Adrian Clayborn      $3,937,500     2.18
Dwayne Allen          $3,880,000     2.15
TOTAL:                   $86,222,008     47.84

Its only about a million dollar difference but more to the point there is not a gigantic spending differential between the two teams; nor would you expect it.  The two teams are very very good; the Pats are, frankly, one penalty away from losing in the AFC Championship game.  And the Seahawks- like the Pats - are pretty consistently in the playoffs.  If there is a line of demarcation difference its that the Pats have at the #3 spot- who would you rather pay $11 mil to: Doug Baldwin or Gronk?  And then look at Gilmore, the supposed best CB in the NFL; he's paid $9mil.  Would you rather play Gilmore 9 or Britt and Coleman 9 mil? 

I think the difference is that the Pats have been able to put in HUGE talent at relatively cheap prices.  Oh, and avoided injuries (knocks on wood).  I think that the Pats DECIDE to spend and they get a discount for certain people because those palyers know 2 things:

1. They will compete for a title.  Setphon Gilmore could never hope for that in Buffalo;

2. They knew their NEXT contract (with another team) will be HUGE; this was the draw for Revis.  

But this does not answer the question- how have the Pats maintained such incredible success over the last decade.  Or two.  I think salary cap manipulation is a factor, but I think they spend their money in the right places.  But an unhappy byproduct of that is you lose people like Chandler Jones.  Jones is currently a $15.5 mil hit against Zona; NOBODY on either team is paid that much except the QBs.  That's the downside. 

And as reductionist as this is, the Pats have Brady and they have Beliechick (and probably a lot of PEDs and some tapes of various offensive alignments of other teams).  And that does a lot.  

[BigFatCoward]

Jesus. Outside of the top guys they make shit compared to what I expected. 

[Rockroi]

1 minute ago, BigFatCoward said:

Jesus. Outside of the top guys they make shit compared to what I expected. 

Also, Brady's number is misleading; included in his salary is $5 mil in "incentives"; these are all counted against the cap EVEN IF Tom does not hit the incentives (SPOILER ALERT - he didn't).  So he's actually paid LESS than Wilson, but the cap number- which is the only relevant issue here - is substantively equal between the two.  

[Kalbear]

Wait - where is Earl Thomas in the above list?

[Kalbear]

Ah, here we go - you only included active players:

Earl Thomas

FS

$8,500,000

$1,900,000

-

-

-

-

-

($10,400,000)

$10,400,000

5.85

[DMC]

24 minutes ago, Rockroi said:

Also, Brady's number is misleading; included in his salary is $5 mil in "incentives"; these are all counted against the cap EVEN IF Tom does not hit the incentives (SPOILER ALERT - he didn't).

The incentives were deemed "likely to be earned," so they did count against the cap.  However, since he didn't hit any of them, the Pats will get a $5 million credit towards next season's cap.  Which is definitely substantively relevant.

[Rockroi]

29 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Ah, here we go - you only included active players:

Earl Thomas

FS

$8,500,000

$1,900,000

-

-

-

-

-

($10,400,000)

$10,400,000

5.85

Okay, an additional 10 mil IS significant (though it only brings the number of total cap % to around 4% higher than the Pats'.  But, yeah, 10Mil is significant.  (by contrast, the Pats only have about $660K for Josh Gordon on the suspended list and Isiah Wynn at $2mil on the IR list).  

But it gets worse for Seattle when you include Dead Cap hits versus the Pats:

Here are the PATS top 3 dead-cap hits (not including IR above)

Shea McClellin    OLB    $1,908,334     1.06
Alan Branch           DT    $1,000,000     0.55
David Harris           LB    $625,000        0.35

That's $3.53 mil or 1.96% of the cap

Now... here are the Seahawks dead cap hits:

Michael Bennett    DE    $5,212,500     2.93
Jeremy Lane         CB     $2,500,000     1.41
Richard Sherman  CB    $2,200,000     1.24

That's $9.91 million in dead cap for a whopping 5.58% of the cap.  Okay, that right there is a GIGANTIC difference in the two teams.  The When you include Thomas its like 16 million differential and around 3% of the cap; when you expand it to ALL dead money and ALL IR Seattle has $15mil in IR money v, $7..7 for the Pats and in Dead money, the Seahawks have an astronomical $22 mil to the Pats $10mil.  

So, ON THE FIELD< the Pats and Seahawks have a lot of similarities; but OFF the field, the Seahawks have a lot more baggage than the Pats.  And its expensive.  

 

[Kalbear]

Right. That's the real thing that I think Belichick said at one point, which is that the 53rd player is the one where quality really matters. 10 to 20 million doesn't sound like much, and when you're talking one or two players it doesn't. But when you're talking about the last 20 players it's the difference between getting rookies at minimum contract and getting veterans or even good veterans. I bet if you look at most rosters xs the Pats you'll find the Pats have a lot more 1-2m per year players than most, and fewer rookie contracts. 

ETA: for example, the Seahawks have a total of 24 of their players on the active roster making less than $1m, with most of them being rookies or second year players. The Pats? 15. Heck, the Seahawks have 15 players making minimum salary by themselves. That lack of depth really hurts. 

(also amusing to me is that Sony Michel is one of those people making 1-2m, as is Phillip Dorsett. )