Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill B
What about Adam Archuletta? What about Brandon Llyod? What about Dana Stubblefield? What about Dan Wilkinson? I can keep going but all of these players were veterans that got huge signing bonuses/contracts by the Redskins and did not perform well. Has acquiring high priced veterans instead of focusing on the draft resulted in a better record for the Redskins because the Front Office had evidence of what these players did in the NFL on other teams?
Instead of just restricting rookie contracts the only way to avoid overpaying for busts is to change contracts that rely on signing bonuses to contracts that rely on performance bonuses, but there a lot of agents and the NFL players association that will fight that to the end so we are stuck to having high priced busts that consist of rookies as you pointed out and veterans as I have pointed out.
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I wouldnt consider any one of those guys you mentioned a bust. All of those guys showed what they could do in the NFL, and all of them produced what could be predicted of them. We took a risk on Arch knowing that he couldnt cover, Llyod isnt doing that much worse than he did in SF (if he is doing worse at all), Dana Stubblefield got injured and never recovered fully, that could happen to anyone and was just unfortunate, and Dan Wilkinson actually did well for us in the beginning, but he weighs alot, and as a result did worse earlier on in his career than he should have. But all of what I just said is irrelevevent to the fact that we are not forced to pay these guys the money that we pay them. We choose who we give that money to. The rookies who are taken early on have to get paid that money, and teams might not think the rookies are worth that money, but according to what they should get paid, they are paid. Also, we have documented footage of what vets can do, and can predict when they might not produce those numbers. When signing a vet, you make the decision of weather to take a risk on them or not based on their previous preformances in the NFL and the indicators that will predict how well they do with your team and for how long, but that is not true when signing a rookie who you have to sign, and do not know how they will do in the NFL. Also, rookies generally do not make immediate impacts, they take a few years to develop into people worthy of the money that they make, and that is not fair to know that you are probably not going to get full production from a guy for the first few years, but still have to pay him the big bucks.