This whole free agent business is a complete debacle...
Smith, Hartline and Starks should have already been locked up a long time ago for a hell of a lot less than what they're going to end up with.
Bush should have been extended in the off season.
Long is the difficult one and none of the options seem too appealing, his trade value was probably at its peak 2 or 3 weeks ago when a few playoff hopeful teams had their QBs getting the snot kicked out of them. I guess I would grudgingly use my franchise tag here.
Fasano is probably a goner.
Who cares about Clemmons.
Clemons is gone....Can't let Fasano walk, who are you going to put out there in his place? Charles Clay...no thanks and if you read down in the chatter you can see Egnew can't remember the plays and one Dolphin doesn't think he plays (if at all) in this league long.
We can't give Jake Long a contract similar to Joe Thomas...he's not playing at that level. This is the trickiest situation of them all, we low ball him and his agent will probably get upset and let him test the market if we don't franchise him, we franchise him and he takes up $15 million in cap space...a large chunk of money. Really he's playing like an $8 million a year LT but he'll get more than that...I'm hoping we can keep him for $10 million a season but I'm not feeling good about this situation. I think his agent, if he's doing his job, will try to milk everyone out of us that he can.
Bush I would sign to an incentive based contract...escalators in games played, yards from scrimmage, pro bowl selection, etc. If he misses games he won't get the yards most likely and he'll end up playing dirt cheap.
Hartline may be the cheapest re-sign. He loves it here, Tannehill likes throwing to him, he's finally in an offense and has a QB that takes advantage of the things he does best. This is where he wants to be and I think a $5 million/year contract is not unreasonable. If he scored more TDs I would say more but even bad #1 WRs get 6 TDs in a season and Hartline's career high came in his rookie season and it was only 3 TDs. We need a WR that can win in the red zone and that's not Hartline or Bess...as good as both of them have been playing.
Starks, I've been saying since training camp, needs to be re-signed. Some of you want him to walk (don't make me pull up the posts cause they're out there). This guy is only 28, been one of the most consistent DT we've had since he signed as a free agent and has been part of a DL that is shutting down the run week in and week out. We don't let someone like him walk.
Smith is playing better than ever. I've been on this guy about his play for a long time and have been mostly dissatisfied. This year he's balling out...I'm worried that it may only be because of his contract year but it's a risk we have to take because we're thin at CB. I just hope if we give this kid a new contract he continues to get better. I also think Kevin Coyle has a lot to do with his development as well as Nolan Carroll's (who's a free agent next year and we might want to get him re-signed while the value is cheap).
According to the chatter we'll have 36 players under contract....we re-sign these 5 guys and it's 41 with roughly $15 million left in cap space. $5 million of that will go to the 9 rookies in the class. Realistically 5 of the 9 rookies will be worth anything but most likely all of them stick on the roster bringing it up to 50 players....that should give us roughly $10 million to spend on 3 free agents. That's maybe one big name free agents and two 2nd tier free agents.
