Quote:
Originally Posted by Pyser
it was cold, but so was this
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Well... it's my standard m.o. to look for free agents with a variety of approaches in mind. Among them is the no-bonus, "team-option" contract, especially for guys who don't fit my chemistry, or who are late in their career, or where I don't know that I'll have the cap space to keep them but I need options.
In that offseason, just a couple stages before this, I had lamented as "foolish and stupid" that I had allowed a WR of mine to walk to a new offer, as I had forgotten to tender an offer to him in his preferred stage. That after listing WR among my target improvemnt areas a couple days earlier.
In this guy's case... yeah, I sign him to a 1yr $19m offer, all salary. Old guy, ratings fading, but comes off a 12 TD season.
In the same game stage, I manage to outbid opposition and get another free agent player with a $105m signing bonus. So, that had to tighten my cap situation, I haven't pieced together all the details...
Then,
in the next day's game stage, I extend my superstar DE for a league-topping salary, and manage to sign a different, cheaper wide free agent receiver. He was younger then your guy, I paid him 2yr/$16m, also I'm guessing on a low-bonus deal.
So then,
in the next game stage, I release the older no-bonus WR. Your guy. Not sure how they compared in immediate talent, but the cheaper deal with a chance to extend got held, while the more expensive pure rental got dropped. I don't recall all the circumstances, but I do know that even when I'm trying to aggressively target free agents with hopes of getting the, I frequently am making Plan B and Plan C arrangements in case that doesn't work out. I rarely trap myself with bonus in doing so.. a 1yr fat base salary is just the sort of thing I do there.
Cold? Sure. I routinely put out a lot of trial offers that wouldn't make any sense in the NFL, but that work in FOF. It's not my only move, but it's one I like a lot and use more than pretty much anyone, as nearly as I can tell. And if/when it leaves some fake players to the clean-up-the-junk phase with a minsal contract in the end... no skin off my ass, really.
So, just for context, this wasn't a simple catch-and-release deal. It was more of a catch, then see lots of other stuff change mainly in good ways, and then release. But cold, granted.