Brissett signs 2 year $30 million extension

[Dam8610]

Originally Posted by Chaka

How are we going to draft or sign a QB of any significance when we already have lots of guaranteed money tied up in Brissett and Hoyer? How many QBs can we afford to carry on the active roster? Or do we just cut them? And all of this ignores Kelly, who many were ready to designate the heir apparent to Luck only a few days ago.

Just trying to understand how everyone sees the overall strategy here. To me, the Brissett and Hoyer signings suggest (at least until we see the actual contract terms) that we won't be looking to draft a QB next year - or at least not one that will be carried on the active roster.

That depends entirely on how the season goes. If it's 2017 redux, Brissett can be cut with almost no dead money and the Colts will have a top 5 pick, which they'll almost assuredly use on a QB and have Hoyer in place as the placeholder starter. If it's a division title, deep playoff run type of season, Brissett becomes the franchise guy at least for now. What I'm hoping doesn't happen is that Brissett has a middling season, the Colts don't have the draft capital for a QB, and so they decide to stick with Brissett, even though he's clearly not the answer.

[DrSpaceman]

Originally Posted by rm1369

Yeah this is where we disagree. I think the extra year will be huge in making that determination. Or at least it should be. Brissett is still young. He isn’t a finished product. If he struggles the first half of the season and then has a pretty good second half how much is he worth? Did he just get hot? Or did he improve? If he improved, will it continue? Teams make mistakes all the time on QBs by being desperate and projecting short term success into a long term career. With the money QBs command you can’t afford to be wrong.

You're right, we aren't going to agree here.

If he was a rookie or playing his first season I might agree. But he has already had one season as a starter, though in a different shitty system, and was with the team last year under Reich. This is his 4th year in the league, second year starting. If he can't prove he is worth the money this year, I doubt anything he would do next year would change my mind.

Plus Reich and Ballard have proven to be excellent at their jobs. I think they will know by season's end if he is the future of the franchise or not.

[rm1369]

Originally Posted by DrSpaceman

You're right, we aren't going to agree here.

If he was a rookie or playing his first season I might agree. But he has already had one season as a starter, though in a different shitty system, and was with the team last year under Reich. This is his 4th year in the league, second year starting. If he can't prove he is worth the money this year, I doubt anything he would do next year would change my mind.

Plus Reich and Ballard have proven to be excellent at their jobs. I think they will know by season's end if he is the future of the franchise or not.

It’s not just if he is who they should move forward with, it’s also how much he is worth when moving forward.

We’ll see. I hope it’s clear cut after this season, but I expect him to be up and down a lot. And I expect his numbers to end up middle of the road.

[VeveJones007]

Originally Posted by rm1369

Yeah this is where we disagree. I think the extra year will be huge in making that determination. Or at least it should be. Brissett is still young. He isn’t a finished product. If he struggles the first half of the season and then has a pretty good second half how much is he worth? Did he just get hot? Or did he improve? If he improved, will it continue? Teams make mistakes all the time on QBs by being desperate and projecting short term success into a long term career. With the money QBs command you can’t afford to be wrong.

Yep. Tannehill, Flacco, Garoppolo, Carr, Dalton...there are a ton of QBs that teams overpaid based on very limited info. The Colts now have 32-48 games to make a sound determination on Brissett OR an extra 16 games in 2020 to ease in a rookie QB with Brissett under contract at a reasonable figure.

[VeveJones007]

Originally Posted by DrSpaceman

You're right, we aren't going to agree here.

If he was a rookie or playing his first season I might agree. But he has already had one season as a starter, though in a different shitty system, and was with the team last year under Reich. This is his 4th year in the league, second year starting. If he can't prove he is worth the money this year, I doubt anything he would do next year would change my mind.

Plus Reich and Ballard have proven to be excellent at their jobs. I think they will know by season's end if he is the future of the franchise or not.

Then cut bait after 2019. What is that cap hit going to prevent you from doing in 2020? They aren't backed into a corner, yet you act like they are.

[VeveJones007]

Originally Posted by Dam8610

That depends entirely on how the season goes. If it's 2017 redux, Brissett can be cut with almost no dead money and the Colts will have a top 5 pick, which they'll almost assuredly use on a QB and have Hoyer in place as the placeholder starter. If it's a division title, deep playoff run type of season, Brissett becomes the franchise guy at least for now. What I'm hoping doesn't happen is that Brissett has a middling season, the Colts don't have the draft capital for a QB, and so they decide to stick with Brissett, even though he's clearly not the answer.

I'm hoping against that as well, but Chaka and Spaceman are acting like Brissett has to be the starter in 2020 based on the contract he just signed. That simply isn't the case. The team will have the flexibility to go whichever route they want in 2020. I hope it isn't to settle for mediocrity at QB, but they can choose any route.

[rcubed]

Originally Posted by Dam8610

What I'm hoping doesn't happen is that Brissett has a middling season, the Colts don't have the draft capital for a QB

unfortunately I would guess this is the most likely outcome.

[Chaka]

Originally Posted by rm1369

I think they believe in Brissett and want to give him a chance to prove he is worth it. They did that at the cost of franchising him next year without the ill will and uncertainty it would cause. The other option was to get into a bidding war for him. If you think they over paid now you would have hated that scenario. At least they only are on the hook for him for one additional year if he fails. This lets them make a more informed decision down the road.

Hoyer was signed to be a steady vet and sounding board. No matter what happens the Colts future at QB is likely young and inexperienced - Brissett, Kelly, a rookie. One of the best things teams can do for a young QB is provide them a steady, good influence as a mentor. That’s what they paid Hoyer for. That and to fill in any gaps with at least competent (not Curtis Painter) level QB play.

The Colts were in a bad situation. The franchise QB retired unexpectedly 2 weeks before the start of the season. Ballard had no good options. He took the best one he had.

Yes, no doubt Colts were put in a tough position by the Luck retirement, and I can see how “any port in a storm” might be attractive so you try to lock down your newly promoted backup for an extra year. The strategy didn’t trouble me as much as what we paid, and we absolutely did have another option – to let him prove himself this year and to pay him the market rate after next season. Whether it was better or not is certainly debatable, but I prefer that scenario because (and for once I’ll get to use this rationale) we have plenty of cap space to work with, and I haven’t seen or read a whole lot which suggested that Brissett was all that promising a prospect (sure, the Colts’ brass has been pumping up the guy for a year or two, but I assumed a big chunk of that was to churn the trade waters). If the guy turned out to be the second coming of Peyton Manning, then we could easily pay him.

[Chaka]

Originally Posted by rm1369

The deal he signed will come really close to equaling next years tag plus what he was owed this year. That’s one reason I’m fairly certain the tag entered into the equation. They have gained another year to evaluate him without using the tag and then still have the tag available as a worse case scenario. 1 year of tag is realistic, 2 is not IMO. They maintained flexibility with this deal.

I understand paying for performance but is one year of performance enough? Remember that’s my issue with the Funchess signing. Guys have a good year and they are going to want to capitalize on it. And as you have repeatedly said - teams overpay in free agency. One year of performance is better than none, but is it enough to lock a guy up for 3-5 years with big guarantees? For me it’s not. Especially not at QB.

And I agreed with you on the Funchess signing – at least the part about the length of the contract. It was a bit out of character for Ballard, and while I had no objection to the player or price, I didn’t like that our upside would be limited to one year. Part of that is also that few of us, up to that point, had spent a lot of time watching Funchess so we had to trust in Ballard's talent evaluation.

I don’t see the Brissett situation as analogous, however. First, we've seen Brissett in action, both in 2017 (admittedly in a different system with different, lesser players) and in lots of preseason action since then. I've seen very few glowing reviews of his skills or performance, however.

Second, I don’t think our out-of-pocket costs would be much different under a wait-and-see approach (franchise tender scenario) than under the contract he just signed. He’d still end up with around $30 million for the next two years. And I disagree that a second franchise tender is untenable. It’s actually the third franchise tender which is nearly impossible except in the most extreme circumstances (as a practical matter, only a QB, and only someone like Peyton Manning, for instance). I recall posting the details here last season, but I ran a quick search to refresh my memory and the second year a 20% bump in pay, so it's expensive but workable. The third year is the GREATER of (1) another 44% bump in pay or (2) the average salary of the top 5 players regardless of position. So, applying these rules to the real world, if Brissett got $30 million the first franchise year, he’d get $36 million the second year, and a whopping $52 million the third year – all fully guaranteed.

[Chaka]

Originally Posted by VeveJones007

You're reading waaaaayyyyy too much into the length of the contracts. There's nothing to prevent the Colts from moving on from Brissett or Hoyer next season, just as there was nothing to prevent Ballard from releasing John Simon prior to last season. There would be a cap hit, but it would hardly make a dent in the cap space.

As far as the strategy, it's pretty simple:

1) Brissett proves to be the guy and you stick with him.
2) You aren't sure about Brissett, so you draft a QB. Having that extra WAS 2nd round pick could help in trading up. You could even keep Brissett and/or Hoyer on the roster next year to help the rookie or start the season if they aren't sure the rookie is ready to jump right in and play.

I just think signing guys to big contracts with the idea that you can just cut them and absorb their cap hit if they don't perform is a good way of burning through all of your available cap space and getting little in return.