View Single Post
Old 12-04-2018, 02:37 PM   #38
MIJB#19
Coordinator
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Maassluis, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands
2078 GM Notes, week 8
Wow. Morris to Mills and Blair as the diversion. I think I haven't been this enthusiastic about our offense since the 2023 season (when we had that spectacular collective with Harrison/McDonnell, Givens, Springer and Thomason) and more recently the 2059 season (when we were light years ahead of the rest of the league in every aspect of the game, purely on cohesion). It also makes me skeptic, because both times the team fell apart in the playoffs and went one-and-done. Heck, we are barely over 30 points per game, on pace to come short of the 500+ points those teams scored.

In the off-season leading up to this regular season, Morris to my surprise was unprotected by the Orlando Talons. When I saw him available on the open market, listed at the top of the "grey sheet", I knew I wanted to take a stab at it. It wasn't easy though, we went into the off-season $25 over the cap. Despite having Erickson (3rd in passing yards last season), Loera (still skilled enough to play) and McAlister (in that range of being 30-35th best QB in the league), I figured Morris could improve the offense to a higher level.

First, we released Loera, saving close to $20M, and renegotiated with a bunch of expensive players to get more space: $4.75M on QB Erickson, over $13.5M on J.R. Mills, almost $7M on OT Oscar Meadows and $17.5M on linebacker Antonio Battle. Then we offered Morris a massive, yet respectable, 4-year deal, with a $25M salary this season, $55M in the following 3 seasons and a $75M signing bonus. And he took it, right at the stage he wanted to sign in.

It gives Morris cap figures of $43.75M this season and $73.75M in each of the next three seasons. The salary cap is $433.8M. It's huge. But I think we'll manage. I fully expect to be able to get him to sign for much less next season, worst case having to go the Cap Out route, to trim his figure to $39M next season (-$34M to what it is scheduled to be). Heck, if we win a title, it'll all be worth it. With Erickson and McAlister as the backup plans, we're not quite a team that should immediately drop from first to worst.

Still, I didn't expect to sign Morris. I hoped we would (and we did), but I fully expected somebody else to make an even better, maybe shorter, offer. Other quarterbacks around the league aren't that far away from $43.75M though, Morris' cap figure is only 9th overall amongst quarterbacks:
65.08M Ashton Turnbull (North Plainfield, 55-rated overall)
57.82M Cesar Small (Iowa, 65-rated)
56.57M Brian Sams (Rochester, 82-rated)
53.62M Clayton Andrews (Toronto, 61-rated)
49.59M Brandon Riley (Augusta, 73-rated)
48.65M Ike Woodhouse (Bordeaux, 67-rated)
46.19M Derek Barge (Moontown, 83 rated)
45.94M Logan Bradford (Fairbanks, 76-rated)
43.75M Bennett Morris (Maassluis, 74-rated)
40.03M Gerald Matthews (Snapfinger, 65-rated)


What about Blair? It was quite uncharacteristic for me to take a running back in the first round of the draft. Before Blair, we picked 9 running backs in the top 100 picks of the draft:
2008 #51 Scott Bagley
2013 #99 Brenden Boone
2030 #85 Courtney McCormick
2032 #20 Darrin Keegan
2042 #29 Harold Riley
2056 #78 Dakota Giles
2058 #64 Scottie Buckner
2066 #91 Nicky Hayes
2069 #82 Lucas Blackwell
2078 #13 Walt Blair

Keegan, Riley and Blackwell, so far, were the only ones that became full time starters. We actually cut Blackwell this off-season. He played well, but I didn't have faith in him carrying the ball 25 times a game or still be useful as a 3rd down back. With Blair, we have a guy that can carry 25 times and do it well. Raul Curie is good enough as a 3rd down back, with the endurance and special teams skills to not have to worry about him not contributing. But Blair so far is actually exceeding expectations. Having the #1 ranked OL in cohesion might help there, which for a great deal will be on our 14th year center Tom Anaya. Re-signing guard Carlos Webb to a 5-year deal with very cap out friendly terms was also important. Right tackle Oscar Meadows is on less cap friendly 3-year deal, but a cap out next season is still possible.

All in all, we're projecting to be $64M over the cap going into the 2079 off-season, with 47 players signed. But a lot of that is on the 9 players with a base salary of 10M+, they combined for $188M of cap costs, just on those base salaries. As mentioned already, we can save $34M on Morris alone, we should be able to save $18M on linebacker Antonio Battle, $10M on defensive tackle Glen Stiegler, $9M on Carlos Webb, $6M on wide receiver J.R. Mills, $8M on wide receiver Brody Stevens and $6M on cornerback Alonzo Hitchcock, that's roughly $100M, a lot more than we will need.

On the bad side of things, we've actually collected an excess of draft picks for the next off-season. We've got the 2nd round picks of Chicago, Texas and Williamsburg, as well as a 5th from Chicago, on top of our own 7 picks. The cap cost of those picks might be trickier than the contract renegotiations of those mentioned above and extending a majority of the 31 players that will be in their last year of contract...
__________________
* 2005 Golden Scribe winner for best FOF Dynasty about IHOF's Maassluis Merchantmen
* Former GM of GEFL's Houston Oilers and WOOF's Curacao Cocktail
MIJB#19 is offline   Reply With Quote