Does Jerry Reese really like the offensive line as it is constituted or is he constrained by his mistakes?
Reese has stated that he thinks that "Jerry and Newhouse are quality starting players". |
Does reese really believe this or is he financially limited in what he can do to improve the line?
Reese has done a good job in rebuilding the defense and acquiring impact offensive players.
However, the Giants have not spent any money on improving the offensive line.
I believe that Reese is "hamstrung" by his prior offensive line acquisitions.
Reese may not have a choice but to accept the "status quo".
He has spent a fortune on the offensive line.
The Giants are paying big money for active players ; Pugh, Flowers,and Richburg, but the Giants are also paying a significant amount of dead money on the contracts for Schwartz and Beatty.
In addition Reese has brought in John Jerry, and Marshal Newhouse.
The following is an analysis of the Giants payroll for the offensive line. I will use the cap number, not the actual costs for this analysis.
Ereck Flowers $3,270,871
Justin Pugh $2,655,513
Marshall Newhouse $1,950,000
John Jerry $1,900,000
Weston Richburg $1,330,185
Bobby Hart $542,897
Adam Gettis $675,000
and in the dead money
William Beatty $5,000,000
Geoff Schwartz $1,916,667
The total CAP for offensive linemen is $19,241,133.00 or 27% of the offensive CAP of $70,851,257 or 13% of the total CAP.
|
After researching the cost impacts I was shocked and dismayed to see how much Newhouse and Jerry were getting paid. Jerry Reese has commited $3,850,000. this year to two linemen who should not be starting. Reese is paying off an additional $6,916,667. of dead money. That means that $10,776,667.00 is already spent on what could be (2) star offensive linemen.
The dead $ hurts but I dont think its stopping them from spending. I think they haven't found anyone who in their mind will be a significant upgrade
as they should be.
I believe that the Giants will not spend money on offensive linemen.The Giants are already spending $10M of CAP on the RT and RG possitions. (Also remember this is the CAP number not their actual compensation).
We may not have seen it yet.
But it's in there :-).
On A serious note - What about Jerry @ RT. The winning combination might be Hart @ RG and Jerry @ RT if they have to work with what they have now.
Jerry is a good pass blocker.
They aren't and he doesn't believe it.
The truth is the roster he had built in recent seasons was so bad and/or injury riddled it was going to take more than this last off season to repair.
The way the dominoes fell in free agency and the draft has left the right side of the offensive line and the RT slot in particular behind in upgrading the talent curve of the team.
"If you don't see it, it might not be there"
a corollary to Accorsi's "If you see it, it's there"
It's like some of you would rather overpay an aging, injured, big name to "fix" the right side of the OL, and let OBJ go. You guys do realize we need to have substantial money earmarked for Odell, JPP, and Richburg when it comes time to discuss extensions, right?
The dead money on Schwartz and Beatty hurts much more, but not to the point where it's preventing the Giants from doing whatever they feel is necessary.
Newhouse and Jerry are paid like what they are: quality vet backups or low-end vet starters. Ideally, you'd like to fill the 4th through 7th OL spots with cheap players on their rookie contracts. It hasn't worked out that way, so Reese filled the void with stopgap vets. Not a great situation, but it's not constraining them cap-wise.
Mackenzy Bernadeau, Khalif Barnes, Stefen Wisniewski, Jermon Busrod, Lyle Sendlein, Andrew Gardner, Joel Bitonio, and he is paid more than Weston Richburg.
Geoff Scwartz is now getting paid $840,000 as a back up.
When you do that you will get a very different concept of his compensation. The list I included is directly from Over The Cap.
See Newhouse.
Link - ( New Window )
I doubt that Newhouse is starting on any of those other teams.
It is not just Newhouses salary.
Who are the guys Solari "brought in with him"? Just wondering. In the last 6 years Solari has been with the 49ers and Packers. These are the only two guys on the roster who seem to have overlapped with him:
The Giants signed Ryan Seymour as an unrestricted free agent from the New Orleans Saints in April 2016. Seymour was originally drafted in the 7th round of the 2013 NFL Draft by the Seattle Seahawks. Since then, he has spent time with the Seahawks (2013), San Francisco 49ers (2013), Cleveland Browns (2014), Chicago Bears (2015), and New Orleans Saints (2015). Seymour has played in 11 games with just three starts. Seymour lacks ideal size, but he is a strong, smart, blue-collar over-achiever. Versatile, he has played all five offensive line spots.
The Giants signed Dillon Farrell as an unrestricted free agent in April 2016. Farrell was originally signed as an undrafted rookie free agent by the San Francisco 49ers after the 2014 NFL Draft. The 49ers waived him in September 2015 and he was signed by the Titans to their Practice Squad later that month. Farrell played in eight games with the 49ers in 2014 with no starts. Versatile, Farrell can play guard or center. He is more of a position-blocker than mauler at the point-of-attack. Farrell flashes in pass protection.
I am not saying that Newhouse and or Jerry are not good backups and that their contracts are not fair.
What I am saying is that the Giants have spent in excess of $10M in CAP space for the Right Tackle and Right Guard possitions. I do not believe that the Giants will sign free agents to any long term expensive contracts. The economics will not work.
They already have too much allocated to the positions.
I don't know why you would bring up Bitonio. He's on his rookie deal. Geoff Schwartz's one-year vet-min deal is a silly comp too. He can't stay on the field, and has a year to prove his body isn't falling apart. Actually, any one-year deal is a bad comp. You have to pay some kind of premium for the team option on a second year.
It is not just Newhouses salary.
A) As already mentioned numerous times, the giants have plenty of cap room and are not "hamstrung".
B) Beatty was an LT, so not sure how his dead cap applies to the RT position
C) ~$1.5 million can be recovered by cutting Newhouse or Jerry if they can find replacements.
The Beatty dead cap number is unfortunate, but if you are going to have dead cap money, this is a good year to have it, when they have alot of cap space.
It is not just Newhouse's salary.
Well, yeah (although you have the positions wrong here)... but you opened the thread yelling about Newhouse and Jerry. Now you seem to understand that, if there's a cap allocation problem - which there probably isn't- they're not the issue.
always a LT,so there is 5 mil.
The Cowboys who have one the highest allocations of CAP for the Offensive line is $19,484,681.00. (their backups are not included in the CAP as they are not within the highest 51 players).
Tyrone Smith $6,800,000.00
Doug Free $5,500,000.00
Ronald Leary $2,553,000.00
Zach Martin $2,445,763.00
Travis Fredrick $2,185,918.00
Total $19,484,681.00
Most teams are substantially below $20M CAP for the OL.
Yes the Giants have CAP space, but when planning for the future you can not spend too much money in one area as it will ultimately impact the Giants ability to up grade other positions or to resign their own players.
The issue is not whether $1.9M is or is not good value for a starting OT.
The issue is whether the Giants can afford to pay big money to replace either Jerry or Newhouse.
The Giants already have $20M allocated for the OL CAP.
Also the salary is more than $1.9M CAP hit. The bonus is prorated.
Um, the backups may not count now, but they're going to count in a few months. Or is the Dallas line so good that they won't need backups? Also, La'el Collins distorts the numbers. He'll be due for a huge raise next year.
Look, the Giants might have a cap issue on the OL in a couple of years, if they extend both Pugh and Richburg. That might influence their thinking about huge long-term contracts for new OLmen. But how many candidates were there for that kind of deal this off-season?
I hope the Giants finances, their present CAP commitments, and their future resigning obligations do not prohibit them from improving the offensive line.
Ultimately I believe that the OL is the Giants weak link.
Jerry and Newhouse would make excellent back ups.
The Giants will be spending the same if not more for an inferior line. We are also comparing the Giants to the best and most expensive OL in football. The Cowboys have 4 first round picks in their starting 5.
Free was a fourth-round pick. Leary was an undrafted free agent, and will play 2016 on a one-year RFA tender.
Among the three first-round picks, Martin and Frederick are cheap because they are still on their rookie contracts. Tyron Smith's restructure calls for an artificially low salary of $1MM in 2016, which jumps to $10MM in 2017.
Here's the list for 2017:
Tyrone Smith $15,800,000
Travis Fredrick $8,821,000 (exercised fifth-year option)
Doug Free $6,500,000
Zach Martin $2,853,391
Ronald Leary UFA
That's over $31MM just for the first three, with Martin due to jump the following year.
But that kind of snapshot - which is the basis of your whole post - doesn't tell you very much. Free is a likely cap casualty (we say that every year) and Frederick will probably sign an extension that lowers his 2017 cap number. On the other hand, Collins and Leary are wild cards. Leary will be a free agent, and Dallas will likely let him walk. On paper, Collins remains cheap through 2017; in reality, his bizarre rookie deal will get torn up next year, assuming he replaces either Free or Leary. So the real numbers for 2017 could end up anywhere.
Two things are certain: first, the Cowboys are counting on Tyron Smith to be very good for a very long time; and second, if that line is as good as we're afraid it might be, the cap cost will escalate quickly as Martin, Frederick and Collins get paid. Another factor keeping the total low in 2016 is that there's almost no dead money for offensive linemen ($46K overall). Kudos to Dallas for that, but it's unlikely to last.
In short, your Dallas comparison doesn't bear scrutiny. You're even wrong about their backups not currently counting against the cap. Joe Looney, Chaz Green and Charles Brown are all in the Top 51, with a total cap cost of $2.1MM. It's a minor technical point, but it speaks to the rigor of your analysis.
I think it's a bit disingenuous to use the Cowboys as your benchmark in a year when their OL cap is engineered to be low, with the piper due to be paid in 2017. Why not use the Eagles?
Jason Peters $9,737,500
Lane Johnson $8,128,388
Jason Kelce $5,200,000
Brandon Brooks $3,200,000
Allen Barbre $1,950,000
Matt Tobin $1,671,000
Stefen Wisniewski $1,510,000
Andrew Gardner $1,358,333
That's about $33M for the top eight guys. There's another $1MM in dead money on Evan Mathis. More to the point, look at the four guys at the bottom. They illustrate the point most relevant to Newhouse and Jerry: there's a wage scale for decent veteran OL depth, and the Giants are in line with the competition. Philly probably hopes that a rookie like Seumalo or Vaitai or a cheap vet like Barrett Jones or Dennis Kelly will knock one of the low-end guys off the roster. But if that doesn't happen, the Eagles will happily pay a bit more for a solid bench. That's why they signed Wisniewski. Meanwhile, if you want to know what above-average starters on their second contracts make, look at the deal Philly gave Brooks: $40MM over five years, with $21MM guaranteed. And he's a guard, not a tackle.
Trent Williams $10,668,750
Shawn Lauvao $5,000,000
Brandon Scherff $4,821,735
Kory Lichtensteiger $3,878,125
$24MM for four guys, none of whom play right tackle. That's OK if they're right about Morgan Moses. But the total picture is probably worse than the Giants', in part because they picked a guard so high last year.
The elephant in the room for the Giants is Ereck Flowers. If he truly is the left tackle the team thinks he is, the team's cap commitment to the offensive line won't be an issue until at least 2018.
Less than 2 million per year for guys who started most of last year on a top ten offense is pretty good. The only 'mistakes' were Schwartz and Beatty and he ended those once it became clear they weren't going to pan out. We have the money to spend and no player to spend it on.
I'd be surprised if he didn't add a RT by September.
These two guys are veterans who know the system and the line play. They are who they are but I wouldn't call them total slouches or anything.
Finally, we have to hope the young guys like B. Hart, B. Jones develop. I also think we will in fact add at least one veteran UFA who is available due to cuts and such. This ain't over yet folks!
So, the premise of the thread is that we should overspend again on marginal players to provide a slight upgrade over Jerry/Newhouse?
As best I can tell, there were no value deals out there to be had. The couple of quality FA went elsewhere on very expensive deals. What was left wasn't enough of an upgrade to warrant spending the money on. It's not that difficult a concept.
Eric, we have 20 mil for this year, but we need to be very cautious in how many big deals we hand out. There are a couple of very big in house FA deals coming next year and the year after.
I'm more disappointed in the lack of drafting a prospect for next year than I am in not spending huge dollars on a FA, but I admit I don't know the players/value available during the draft.
$1,9500,00 is not a lot of money to be a backup or fring starter. It seems like this thread is trying to spin it to say it is. Newhouse and Jerry are both capable players, best suited for depth and they are paid like it.
Not to mention the terrible correlation to the Cowboys situation. They are paying a lot for the OL is the big picture, as BBB pointed out very well.
The players cited by the OP aren't making a lot of money, the Giants have the cap room even if they were, and the team still has room to make moves to replace current starters to make them backups. Not really sure what the debate is supposed to be about.
was worth every penny Schwartz not so much .
I think before it's all said and done that
we add another Staring Vet .
Hopefully that is a decent run blocker .
Jerry and Newhouse are older NFL veterans. Of course they will make more than richburg -- Weston is on a rookie deal and wasn't even a first rounder.
The OL has a pretty big cap hit but 7-8 million comes off next year and really only Pugh's hit goes up anytime soon. Giants have plenty of cap flexibility on the OL now and even more later. Not sure what the point is here.