Was the Nelson Contract a Good Idea?

[Nickster]

1 hour ago, throwing BBZ said:

 

 You will never GET it!  

  The Team building concept you found incomprehensible.

  That his contract gave us many extra millions to spend on other players this year and next is lost on you.

  That you or they had NO IDEA that he would play than at less than All-Pro level this season, but is part of your whining complaint now.

 And of course this thread is NOTHING BUT a victory lap. There is no other purpose for the thread. 

  Q, IF you bother to watch him is still busting his ___, and playing good football when others around him are not playing good enough ball. 

That includes Ryan, our TE's, WR's, and RB's poor blockiing. 

  I would be interested to know, and you probably do because you are so knowledgeable, what % of the time do we see a 4 man rush, and where do we stand there as to our peers.

 One would think we are facing more than 4 people rushing a lot because of our inexperience at LT and G, and because Ryan's short throwing field brings the D closer to the LOS.

 All of these things add up to making it harder to grade higher.

 The Colts do their own grading of every player for every play, just maybe he grades higher than PFF.

  

 

Bebes.  One thing I've noticed about you is that you are really good at being wrong and shooting completely off target.   

To the bolded, I am including a quote from me before the Nelson signing

 

 Quenton Nelson Poll

in Colts Football

Posted September 7

I'd like to see how the dude's back holds up before the club throws a bunch of guaranteed money at him.  

 

So I am not "whining" in retrospect.  I thought it was a bad idea at the time, and unless he bounces back and plays way better the next couple of years, this will be a very bad contract going forward. 

 

Good God BBZ.  what is the purpose of any thread?  

 

We look like we might have a few very large contracts that are going to make things difficult.  Teams can move  a couple of things around with cap numbers to keep the window open for a short time, but eventually they are going to have to pay up.  The Rams are a good example.  They went for it and kicked the can down the road and won.  Great work there.  But now they are having some issues and it's going to be interesting to see what their future is going to be like.   They won.  They were ready to win, so good work.

We haven't won.  We are not ready.  So having bloated contracts for us is probably going to be an issue going forward.  Pittman, Taylor decisions coming soon.  are we going to resign Gilmore (I'd guess he'd want to leave).  Big money is coming due soon and to my eyes, we aren't that close to being a solid team in the near future. 

[KB]

19 minutes ago, Nickster said:

 

I was looking back and there was a lot of stuff about Q negotiations in August.  Then nothing got done until right before the first game.  It looked like for a while that the deal would be done later. 

 

I can't believe anyone would pay Nelson what he's earning after watching him this season.  

He's on making $10.2 mill this year and $12.2 mil next year. He also not the worst in the league. Everything will be ok.

[Nickster]

Just now, KB said:

He's on making $10.2 mill this year and $12.2 mil next year. He also not the worst in the league. Everything will be ok.

 

No one said he's the worst in the league.  But he's not really playing close to the best of guards, let alone being 20 % better than all guards. 

That's what he's getting paid starting after next season the cap number will be tremendous, and I feel pretty strongly that the Colts will be rebuilding. 

 

Look.  I hope he returns to elite play.  But he's not close to that now and really hasn't shown many signs of that type of play for a long time now. 

 

[tfunky14]

you guys that say no,  are hypocrites. If he went to another team you be *ing why we didn't re-new his contract. 

 

He's been best linemen in football the last 3 years.  He deserves every penny. He's human and guess what, the guy across him plays in the NFL and is good to. This year the whole line has struggled and everyone wants to point fingers. 

 

Really?

[KB]

19 minutes ago, Nickster said:

 

No one said he's the worst in the league.  But he's not really playing close to the best of guards, let alone being 20 % better than all guards. 

That's what he's getting paid starting after next season the cap number will be tremendous, and I feel pretty strongly that the Colts will be rebuilding. 

 

Look.  I hope he returns to elite play.  But he's not close to that now and really hasn't shown many signs of that type of play for a long time now. 

 

If we're rebuilding then the cap is a moot point. If he still isn't playing to that level then his contract will have to be restructured or he can be cut. It'll be a decent amount of dead cap, but not the worst thing. With the cap growing each year, when that third year hits its going to be barely even a dent. 

 

I'm not really worried about it. Let's get better players on each side of him, preferably on rookie contracts, and let him have an off-season of healing instead of surgeries. It does suck that he hasn't played up to his normal standard this year. I miss Baldys Breakdowns of Big Q. Hopefully he comes back with a chip on his shoulder next year.

[Mackrel829]

2 hours ago, Nickster said:

 

My main idea in this topic is we should have waited.

 

Would you really sign Q today for what he was signed for in August?  I don't think anyone would, including the Colts. It seemed like a cautious approach would have been prudent.   Wati and see. 

 

And just to be clear here, Quenton Nelson was given 20% more than any G in NFL history.  That's Elite pay PLUS 20 %.  

 

Would you really think it is a good idea to sign Q to that number after this season? Who were we negotiating against?  Why not wait and see how it goes?  If you can't get a deal done, you could tag him for a year and see how next season went.

 

Unless he gets back to elite level, I can't even imagine that anyone else would entertain the thought of paying Q 20 per, and there might not have been another org even consider it before this season .

 

It's not that people wouldn't be willing to pay Q what he makes if we waited a year, it's more that Q wouldn't be able to justify asking for that much in negotiations if we waited a year. So yes in hindsight we likely would have saved a few bucks. 

 

But he clearly wanted to be paid last year - why wouldn't he? What if you refuse to give him an extension and this upsets him, he feels disrespected? What happens when he holds out? What happens when he refuses to sign an extension at all and opts to go to free agency again. You're complaint about how much he's getting paid now, would you rather go down the route of franchise tagging him instead? That's not going to be cheap either, it's all guaranteed, and he could still walk the next year.

 

And saying that he got 'more than any G in NFL history' is a little disingenuous. Not massively so but a little. That's what happens constantly with the best players in the NFL. The cap is constantly going up, as is inflation, and the best players are therefore constantly setting records in terms of contracts. You could argue that 20% more (I haven't verified this but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that it's accurate) is a little rich but making him the best paid G in NFL history is not a surprise at all.

[Nickster]

5 minutes ago, Mackrel829 said:

 

It's not that people wouldn't be willing to pay Q what he makes if we waited a year, it's more that Q wouldn't be able to justify asking for that much in negotiations if we waited a year. So yes in hindsight we likely would have saved a few bucks. 

 

But he clearly wanted to be paid last year - why wouldn't he? What if you refuse to give him an extension and this upsets him, he feels disrespected? What happens when he holds out? What happens when he refuses to sign an extension at all and opts to go to free agency again. You're complaint about how much he's getting paid now, would you rather go down the route of franchise tagging him instead? That's not going to be cheap either, it's all guaranteed, and he could still walk the next year.

 

And saying that he got 'more than any G in NFL history' is a little disingenuous. Not massively so but a little. That's what happens constantly with the best players in the NFL. The cap is constantly going up, as is inflation, and the best players are therefore constantly setting records in terms of contracts. You could argue that 20% more (I haven't verified this but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that it's accurate) is a little rich but making him the best paid G in NFL history is not a surprise at all.

 man what I'm seeing is Q got 4 mill more AAV per year than any other guard.  That's 20% and that seems like a lot more.  

[2006Coltsbestever]

It was a great idea to answer the op's Question. End of thread 

[chad72]

16 minutes ago, Nickster said:

 man what I'm seeing is Q got 4 mill more AAV per year than any other guard.  That's 20% and that seems like a lot more.  

 

How much less did he get the first 3 years at an All Pro level when he was paid like a rookie? 

 

It all evens out, and when the cap goes up and we have a rookie QB operating, it wouldn't move the needle on preventing what the Colts truly want to do for their team building though. That is the point most of us are making. 

 

I am not denying the cap allocations are considerably different from other contending teams w.r.t positions but in this specific case, Q's contract won't keep us from being competitive. 

16 minutes ago, 2006Coltsbestever said:

It was a great idea to answer the op's Question. End of thread 

 

YES...  

[crazycolt1]

While some want to complain about Q being overpaid I don't see anyone complaining about the few players that are getting underpaid.  

[Hawkeyecolt]

I didn’t see the need to sign him to an extension prior to the season.  I would have let him play out his contact this year then tagged him at the end of the year.  
 

I’ve got a bigger issue with Kelly’s contract at the moment.  He’s the first guy I’m moving on from after the season.  

[AKB]

@Nickster hey nice thread. 

[Nickster]

4 hours ago, Hawkeyecolt said:

I didn’t see the need to sign him to an extension prior to the season.  I would have let him play out his contact this year then tagged him at the end of the year.  
 

I’ve got a bigger issue with Kelly’s contract at the moment.  He’s the first guy I’m moving on from after the season.  

Yeah for me, I really hope the club changes the way it does business in many situations. It seems fairly obvious that some of the basic principles and practices of the club need  some adjustment.

 

it seemed at the time that a wait and see approach was called for.

 

the way I remember Kelly’s dead cap is much lower next season.  This seems like an obvious place to see if Pinter can fill that spot.  I guess technically we are still “alive” in the playoff race but shouldn’t be after Sunday.  So after that, I hope we see some movement towards preparing for the future by seeing if a couple guys are ready to step up.

[Nickster]

On 12/15/2022 at 10:25 AM, Nevbot said:

 

While I agree with a lot of this, lets at least give the move a bit more context for sake of hindsight.  His contract was only going to be inevitable if he played up to his draft position, and up to last offseason- he generally had done so.  So there's that.  But I completely agree that taking a HOF level guard that early was only ever going to end up this way and it made sense at the time because we had Luck to protect. 

We therefore have to view Ballard as having used a #3 on not only a guard.  He used #3 to get a HOF level guard, a HOF caliber LB, and a starting level RT in Leonard and Smith, respectively.  Regardless of how you view those players NOW in the current climate, Ballard absolutely maximized the the value of that pick at the time if it wasn't going to be for a QB.  The issue here is he also paid Leonard and Smith like they too were a top 10 pick.  

I have to believe (and I do believe) that if Luck had retired BEFORE THAT DRAFT, it would have been a way different story.  Hell, Ballard might have even traded up for his QB at that time because he was well within striking range. 

What still becomes a head scratcher to me is why in the world did Ballard not consider having Q play out his 5th year option?  And even after that consider tagging him?  It's not like Q lit the world on fire for the last half of 2021 either.

Sometimes paying above market value in the short term in order to buy time to reveal more of a clearer picture of a player (weather that be health wise, consistency wise, or even to test his motivation) is a useful tool that Ballard doesn't seem to ever utilize.  By shelling out the largest contract at the position, you do not motivate a player to grind through nagging injures (Leonard), play consistent football (Smith, Nelson) and as a result you are left questioning a players motivation after getting paid. 

Things like the 5th year option for 1st round picks and franchise tags exist for a reason,  FREAKING USE THEM!  We could have justified it for any of the 3 players mentioned, and for JT (If we don't trade him) we should absolutely slap him with a franchise tag and them let him walk once his contract expires.  We would be stupid not to...as cold hearted as it sounds.  

That is a great post.  We seem to be a sort of Mom and Pop shop in mentality sometimes.  Competing in the corporate world.

[Rhodelesstraveled]

On 12/14/2022 at 1:46 PM, Nickster said:

Do you think the mega contract Nelson signed was a good idea by the Colts management?

HORRIBLE idea