So, here’s the thing. Imagine your Chris Grier.
Christian Wilkins. $24-$25 million per year. for a defensive tackle. The entire salary cap space for the Baltimore Ravens Defensive line last year was guess? $18 million. That’s it. For all of them. And they rotated 4 inside and 4 outside. You’ve just hired anthony Weaver, who just came over from the Ravens. Last year, we had basically Wilkins and Sieler taking 90% of the snaps inside. There was not much of a rotation.
I know they’re injured, but Chubb & Phillips are coming back on the edge. You need to sign Van Ginkel, unless his number gets stupid, but even if it does, I think you still sign him. So now you have Avg, Chubb, Phillips, & Sieler. That’s a lot of pressure and Saks, and maybe you sign Jadaveon Clowney for $4 or $5 million something like this. You know what you need here? Nose tackles. Big space eating guys who command double teams, and can stop the run. So, what do you do? Probably resign RaeKwon Davis, for $4 or $5 per at most, and then go get another big man for the center, someone 340-360 pounds. There are a couple of cats you could look at in the draft but also in free agency. So in other words, you don’t replace Wilkins, you do something different, and paying him that much money isn’t worth it because that 10 Sack season, is probably an outlier when you consider all of the other guys he was playing with, Chubb, Phillips, Sieler, Avg, etc. You’ve got plenty to get pressure on the QB, create forced fumbles, disrupt the passing game etc. What you need now are some big men to play the zero technique. So in other words, re-sign Raekwon Davis, and bring in another zero to eat up blocks and stuff the run whilst your edge player create mayhem and bring the ruckus. You never needed to pay Christian Wilkins that much, especially now with the Baltimore system we will be running and with who we have at edge. Don’t need to spend that money to replace Wilkins. You need more bodies for the rotation.
Robert Hunt. Free agents? John Runyon from Green Bay, Damien Lewis from Seattle, Dalton Risner, from the Vikings, there are some good players you can bring in who will be maybe half the price of Robert Hunt who could play well, or re-sign Conner Williams, and draft a tackle that will play guard that you can kick outside next year as we discussed in the last post.
Don;t need to spend $15 million on a guard or $24 million on a defensive tackle.
