Free Agents thread

[sherck]

Originally Posted by VeveJones007

Ballard didn't make it sound like they were going to invest heavily in FA...which is odd because it's not like they have many guys from the 2013 and 2014 drafts they need to worry about re-signing.

I'll be disappointed if they don't sign at least two quality defensive starters. Maybe he just wanted to hedge since he hasn't reviewed the current roster yet.

Agreed; it will be odd if we don't go fishing in the free agency pool.

Colts are sitting on around $53.600m in free cap space. Back out around $8m for rookie class, practice squad, spots 52/53 on the active roster and in-season "churn" space and they have around $45m in order to sign free agents.

That could be increased by $10.700m if they decide to cut Arthur Jones and D'Qwell Jackson for near $56m in cap space to sign free agents.

Of our own impending free agents, only Walden, Doyle and perhaps Butler will be paid "starter" money by someone in the league.

Other guys like: Akeem Ayers, Robert Turbin, Jordan Todman and perhaps Darryl Morris might get paid more than veteran minimum in 2017 but probably not much more.

So, if the Colts want to retain Butler (for safety?) then it will probably cost them around $4m a year. Doyle is a little harder to figure but will probably be retained for between $3.5 - $5.5m a year but Walden is the issue now that he is a double digit "sack master." Even though we all know that he will probably never hit double digit sacks again in his career (this is only the 2nd year out of 9 seasons that he has had more than 3.0 sacks in a season) he will still get paid for his double digit sack season because pass rushers are so sought after.

My over / under on Walden is $7.00m a year. I think there is an excellent chance that he will want more than that and if he does, then even though our LB cupboard is BARE, I think we should let him walk and sign someone else to play the OLB[EDGE] slot.

So, if we decide to retain all three guys, the Colts will pay around $16m in 2017 cap hit for those guys (lots of ways to do this but I am figuring straight line) so that would leave around $29m (or $40m if we cut Jones/Jackson) in order to sign new free agents.

Three new defensive starters at $8m a year average then allows the Colts to sign a couple of "quality backup" guys like Turbin, Todman or Ayers to round out the roster after seeing what the draft brings.

Anyway, I will be shocked if we don't sign a couple of high quality defensive guys to help boost our draft class. One at each level (D-Line, LB, CB) would be pretty brilliant although I will not be opposed to multiple LB signed.

Cheers,

Thad