Comments on: Investing heavily in a Left Tackle is a luxury bad teams can not afford

By: draftrobot

draftrobot — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 20:43:54 +0000

Interesting read. While you may have a point that an elite left tackle isn’t a “turnaround” type player in that if you have a top 10 pick, you probably had bad quarterback play or a bad defense, and a left tackle doesn’t do much to help that. However, the numbers show it’s very difficult to get just an average left tackle outside of the top 10-20, so if you’re drafting high and don’t have a shot at a franchise quarterback, fast twitch pass rusher, or shutdown cornerback, it’s not a bad investment to pick a left tackle because if he works out he’s going to play for a long time and it gets monumentally more difficult to find equal value in the 2nd or 3rd rounds.

And I agree with Independent George that D’Brickashaw Ferguson is not a disappointment, especially when directly compared to Leonard Davis. While Ferguson may have regressed some of late, he’s already been a 7-year starter, whill surely start at least another 5 years, and at his height in 2009 and 2010 played on arguably the best offensive line in the NFL.

By: mrh

mrh — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 22:03:23 +0000

In reply to Chase Stuart.

Sam Bradford got $50M guaranteed on a six year deal or $8.3M/year. 2010 was technically uncapped but the 2009 cap was $123M. Using that number, Bradford consumed 6.75% of the Rams cap for 2010.

Andrew Luck got $22.1M guaranteed on a four year deal or $5.5M/year. With a 2012 cap of $120.6M, that’s 4.56% of the Colts cap. The difference in Bradford’s and Luck’s (simplistic) cap hit leaves 2.19% of this year’s cap to be spent on an offensive lineman, or about $2.6M.

The Colts actually signed Samson Satele (AV 6 in 2011 or tied for 68th thru 103rd, somewhere in the neighborhood of decent veteran) this off-season for $4M guaranteed over three years ($10.8M total). We can slice that a lot of ways but it’s less than $2.6M in cap hit this year but more than that for the full contract. So the difference probably doesn’t quite get a decent vet lineman; only about 75% of one.

Numbers from Rotoworld, anyone w/a better grasp of contract math can chime in.