Barnwell's Bad Contracts -- two Colts listed

[husker61]

I agree....however, I still wonder how much of those inflated contracts had Irsay's fingerprints on them.  Irsay, not Polian, has been the one making public comments about making XX player the highest paid.  Irsay was the one saying he was going to make Manning the highest paid player in the league.  Irsay's the one who recently tweeted about making Cherilus the highest paid RT.  I HOPE it was Polian so that it won't continue to happen but the tweets about Cherilus make me wonder if Irsay is still too involved in the negotiations.

 

i definitely think it was irsay.

[Jason_]

i definitely think it was irsay.

 

Yeah, I kind of lean that way as well, which kinda scares me. 

[Superman]

I agree....however, I still wonder how much of those inflated contracts had Irsay's fingerprints on them.  Irsay, not Polian, has been the one making public comments about making XX player the highest paid.  Irsay was the one saying he was going to make Manning the highest paid player in the league.  Irsay's the one who recently tweeted about making Cherilus the highest paid RT.  I HOPE it was Polian so that it won't continue to happen but the tweets about Cherilus make me wonder if Irsay is still too involved in the negotiations.

 

Those contracts aren't what bothered me, if you're talking about Freeney, Sanders and Clark. They were all a big part of our team, and really had earned that money. Highest paid or not, it was just a label. What hurt were the above average contracts for average players -- Hayden, Brackett, re-signing Addai, etc. And the team was kind of backed into a corner with those guys because we hadn't been drafting well and didn't have good replacement options for them. 

 

It's like everyone says: the draft is the lifeblood of the team. If you draft well, it helps you manage the cap better, especially with the new rookie wage system. And so long as you don't make a lot of big contract mistakes at once, you'll have the flexibility to spend money and even sign a few free agents when you want.

[Jason_]

Those contracts aren't what bothered me, if you're talking about Freeney, Sanders and Clark. They were all a big part of our team, and really had earned that money. Highest paid or not, it was just a label. What hurt were the above average contracts for average players -- Hayden, Brackett, re-signing Addai, etc. And the team was kind of backed into a corner with those guys because we hadn't been drafting well and didn't have good replacement options for them. 

 

It's like everyone says: the draft is the lifeblood of the team. If you draft well, it helps you manage the cap better, especially with the new rookie wage system. And so long as you don't make a lot of big contract mistakes at once, you'll have the flexibility to spend money and even sign a few free agents when you want.

 

I was mostly thinking of Brackett and Addai but at the same time I do think both Sanders and Freeney were overpaid as well. 

[Superman]

I was mostly thinking of Brackett and Addai but at the same time I do think both Sanders and Freeney were overpaid as well. 

 

Neither Brackett nor Addai were "highest paid." I didn't like either contract at the time, but again, they were indicative of poor drafting. Donald Brown wasn't reliable enough to take the reins from Addai, and that's a first rounder after two years in the league. And ironically, if we had drafted Laurinitis instead of Brown, we would then have been able to let Brackett walk.

 

Throw Kelvin Hayden in that mix as well. He was a good player and I think it made sense to re-sign him, but we gave him BIG money at a position that wasn't of prime importance in our defense. You don't pay a Cover 2 corner $8m+/year. That was just a contract mistake, either way you slice it, but it should have fallen to the coach and GM to say "we don't need to spend big on this position." I don't blame the owner for being willing to open his wallet when his football people ask him to.

 

Sanders and Freeney were premium players. Neither fully lived up to the contract, but Sanders was a special situation. He was in the middle of his DPOY season when we extended him. No one wanted to let him walk. Turns out he just couldn't stay healthy, but his contract was never burdensome for the team, not even when we released him, because it was backloaded and didn't have a big signing bonus. Freeney just lost effectiveness for a number of reasons, including age and a system adjustment. We shouldn't have kept him at $19m last year, but that was a decision made by the new brain trust. Up to that point, Freeney's contract had been very manageable. 

 

I'm just saying that I don't think the Colts cap management was ever the big issue. I think the problem is that we weren't drafting well, and wound up overpaying some of our own veterans as a result. I bet we don't have that issue moving forward.