Gerald McCoy

[Chaka]

Originally Posted by Chromeburn

But I never said that. No one on here has ever said we should blow all our cap space on FA’s. As usual you take what I say and blow it out of proportion. Because there is only two avenues with you. Either save it all and have tons of money under the cap (the only method you endorse) or avenue two which is spend it all on high priced free agents who won’t possibly work out because it’s fools gold.

Oh and Ballard criticized himself saying he didn’t do enough to fix the oline year one.

I just advocate being smart – investing the cap space in players that are likely to bring the greatest return, and avoiding investments that have historically not provided much value in comparison to their cost (i.e. big name free agents). In other words, I advocate running the team like a business, not like a fan, and with the eye towards long term, sustainable success. We should play the angles, using our money to our greatest advantage in the context of the NFL salary cap rules. Being smart and efficient will, over time, give us a huge advantage over the teams that aren't.

Do I think this means we have to “save it all and have tons of money under the cap”? Of course not. I just mentioned in a few posts above that I agreed that we should sign free agents, but that I think our focus is best placed on mid-tier or lower tier guy because they give us the best chance to get a good return on the investment.

I simply don’t think signing older, outside free agents to large contracts is a good investment. For that reason I was uneasy with the Houston signing. He was an expensive player who is on the downside of his career, but I’m hopeful that it has a better-than-normal chance to succeed because the guy isn’t a total outsider – Ballard worked with him while in KC so presumably he has some insight. I also didn’t complain about the Funchess signing – the guy is 25 with upside, so the $10 million didn’t bother me - in fact, the only thing that troubled me was that it was a one-year deal without options.

As far as the OL is concerned, I didn’t argue that the OL was fine following Ballard’s first year or that it couldn’t be improved, but only that your conclusion that he was reactive rather than proactive was unfair because it was founded solely upon the OL alone, without consideration of the giant strides he made elsewhere. You cherry-picked one issue to support your predetermined conclusion, while ignoring all of the evidence that contradicted your theory.

And as to the idea that “no one on here has said we should blow all our cap space on FA’s”, maybe you should read or think about some of the posts more closely. Yes, people don’t use those exact words, but the argument that Luck’s presence should mean that we should not hold back on free agent spending is essentially saying the same thing or something very close. It’s true you didn’t say that in your post (nor did I exactly, for that matter), but I’ve seen some version of that argument advocated many times on here in the past – most recently Colts Classic a few posts above, when he said that when “you have Andrew Luck, every year should be a year in which you are going for it” and so we should have signed McCoy, which is what I was thinking of when I typed my post.