Players lost to Free agency and trade

[Chuckf]

Looked up the 2020 salaries of players who Speilman either traded (Diggs) or let walk.  Joseph, Griffen, Alexander, Rhodes, Waynes, and man its a lot of money!  No way we could have kept these guys.

[Guest]

You're right, no way.

And (so far anyways) it looks like they did pretty good regarding a Diggs replacement. That would be huge if it holds-up over time. 

But I would have liked to have gotten something for all that DB draft capital that walked.

Or found a way to keep MacAlex or even Waynes. 

[Guest]

Yep, had to be done. 

[Guest]

We did lose a lot of players through trades & FA. We've also lost some significant players in Hunter, Pierce, Barr, and Dantzler (2-games), Hughes (2-games) through injuries or sitting out due to Covid. There's a ton of roster turnover, especially on defense, which does go a long way in explaining the problems on defense. I do think there are some promising things. Ngakoue is getting more comfortable and is generating more consistent pressure. Dantzler, Gladney, & even Hill are having some stretches of good coverage. They still have issues, especially getting beat deep. but there's progress. Wonnum is starting to look like a nice find for DE depth. I'm curious to see if the D gets stronger throughout the course of the season

[Guest]

But did you look up how much we are paying for some of those guys anyway - the Dead Cap figures? We have over $20M of our salary cap in dead money for 2020: $9M for Diggs, $4.8M for Rhodes, $2.4M for Joseph, $800K for Griffen, and $2.6M for Josh Kline!

Dead cap is piling up and it cripples NFL teams. This team was built for a window of opportunity which ended last year, and now they are trying to rebuild with a lot of the bills that were pushed to "after the window" coming due.