The current CBA has only two years left to run before fans
Montae Nicholson Jersey , players and owners could be faced once again with embittered labor negotiations and work stoppages (which means lost games).I wrote a title on an article shell about a month ago; that title read: What should the NFLPA be fighting for in the next CBA?As I often do, I typed a few notes into the body of the story so I could remember what inspired me to want to write it, and I left the shell of the article to sit until I had time to write it.There was no hurry; it could be published anytime in the next year and a half, and, as a university teacher, I have a ton of time available in May, June and July.Well, this weekend offers me a 5-day holiday as Thailand enjoys its traditional 3-day New Year celebration, called Songkran.I sat down to flesh out the article, but realized that some things had changed since I first sketched my notes for it.Chief among the changes is that two of the authors at OverTheCap have published a series of articles on this very topic — well-researched and well-written articles that don’t encompass all of the ideas I had sketched in my notes, but which dive much deeper than I had intended in the ideas they do cover.Of course, they also touch on some ideas that I hadn’t considered at all.One of the thoughts that they put to paper that I hadn’t put into my notes is that of a “Salary Cap Amnesty”.I’ll let the OTC writers explain the concept:I had seen a “cap amnesty” idea floated in the comments section of Hogs Haven just days before I read this article, so OTC doesn’t have a monopoly on the concept, but I felt like Jason Fitzgerald and Vijay Natarajan did a good job of fleshing out the concept with enough detail to make it the sort of recommendation that could be meaningfully negotiated, written into a contract, and enforced with practical effect.To recap the key elements of their proposal:The amnesty would be triggered by a catastrophic injury, similar to the one suffered by Alex Smith (OTC also suggests that crimes committed by players be included).The team would trigger the amnesty themselves, but to avoid its use as a “get out of jail free” card on a bad contract, there would be some limitations:(i) an independent doctor has to examine the player and identify that his injury qualifies. This has a bit of the flavor of the independent neurologist that makes the call under the current concussion protocol.(I might expand this protection to 2 doctors, or perhaps a league panel of doctors to guard against roster & cap manipulation).(ii) a team is limited to using the amnesty a maximum of once per 4-year period (or possibly once per decade).This has the feel of coaches having a limited number of red-flags to be thrown for replay challenges, or the maximum of 2 players allowed to return from IR in a season.OTC recommends that the cap relief take the form of no accelerated dead cap charge.We’re lucky here that OTC used Alex Smith as the example, so no calculation is necessary.The article tells us that, under their proposed amnesty rule, the Redskins would have eaten the $5.4 charge for pro-rated bonus in 2018, but that the $52.6m dead cap hit that the Redskins have to deal with if they release Alex Smith now under the current CBA would disappear like a puff of smoke.Note: The OTC article doesn’t discuss the impact of the well-publicized insurance policy that the Redskins have to protect against Alex Smith catastrophic injury.That wrinkle is beyond the scope of this article as well, so I will simply ignore it, as if it didn’t exist.This is a detail that can be dealt with in the collective bargaining process.If this proposed amnesty had been in place under the current CBA, then, when the full extent of Alex Smith’s injury was realized and confirmed by independent doctor(s), then the Redskins front office could have “thrown a red flag” to initiate the amnesty.Smith would have counted $18.4m against the Redskins 2018 salary cap but Washington would have incurred no further cap charges from the contract.The Redskins would have cut him, paid him his guaranteed $71m (including the money paid prior to the injury), and walked away with Dan Snyder a bit cash poorer, but the team’s salary cap situation largely unimpacted.The team, under the OTC proposal, at least, would have been unable to utilize the Amnesty provision again until 2023 or later.Reviewing Jay Gruden’s comments for insight into the cornerback position battle following Scandrick’s release On Tuesday, the release of Orlando Scandrick brought a lot of clarity to the expected regular season depth chart at cornerback, but there probably isn’t room on the regular season roster to keep every young player that’s having a good training camp.To figure out exactly which CBs are most likely to still be on the team when they line upto play the Cardinals in September, we will examine Jay Gruden’s press conference comments from Tuesday.General comments about the young CBs on the roster:What am I taking away from this?I get the sense that Gruden is talking about five guys who are all making the roster.We know that Josh Norman is gonna start on one side of the field.Jay’s comments tell me that Dunbar will be starting on the other boundary.He talks about the ‘emergence’ (a significant and positive word when Jay Gruden uses it) of Danny Johnson and Fabian Moreau at nickel.I don’t think there’s enough in this comment to say which player is behind the other on the depth chart, though the fact that Moreau is a 2nd year player from last year’s draft, and Johnson is an undrafted rookie may give some hint about the depth chart — at least for the start of the season.He identifies the two Virginia Tech rookie DBs — Stroman (‘18 7th round pick used)and Adonis Alexander (‘19 6th round pick used) — as the other young studs; presumably, the backup boundary corners.Lest there’s any confusion about who’s ahead of whom there, Jay had comments about the player taken in the Supplemental Draft last month. That’s press conference gold right there... Jay specifically identified Alexander as the “sixth” corner, which means he sees five guys ahead of Adonis: Norman, Dunbar, Moreau, Johnson and Stroman.That’s pretty strong confirmation of the expected depth chart.Jay makes it clear that Alexander is not really going to be ready to play defensive snaps at the start of the season, which might open the door a crack for a seventh CB.Jay
Josh Doctson Jersey , in the press conference, reiterated his praise for the rookies, but his slight change of wording helps identify who seems to be the leading slot corner, and then tosses in one more name:Jay, this time, focuses on Moreau as the “inside” player.I may be reading too much into this, but I’m thinking that Danny Johnson is showing up as a bit more of an all-purpose player who can backup the boundary or the slot, despite his small size (he’s listed at 5’9”, 181 pounds).Johnson ran a 4.44 40-yard dash at the Combine, giving him the speed to work inside in nickle, and perhaps to run on the boundary with speedy deep-threat receivers as well.With Moreau (6’0”, 205 lbs) playing the slot most of the time, the Redskins will have the flexibility to mix up coverages by swapping playing both Moreau and Johnson in the slot to challenge offensive scheming, and to have Johnson available for boundary duty if needed.Jay Gruden kinda throws Ranthony Texada’s name out there as an afterthought, and the adjective he uses is “good” (rather than something more glowing).Usually, this would make me think Texada was on his way to the practice squad, but there are two things that make me think that Texada still has a shot at the final 53.The first reason is that Adonis Alexander probably won’t be up-to-speed to start the season, but almost certainly needs to be kept on the roster to protect him from being picked up on waivers without making it to the Redskins practice squad.That would leave a young CB group desperately thin.The coaches may opt for a 7th CB, at least to open the season.The second reason for thinking Texada has a shot is that Jay mentioned him one more time:This time Jay is lumping Texada in with Johnson, and the praise is — by Jay’s press conference standards — fairly effusive.He said this in the context that the surprisingly good play by these rookies forced or allowed the coaches to cut Orlando Scandrick.All of a sudden, I’m thinking that the coaching staff might start the season with 7 cornerbacks — especially since both Johnson and Stroman have punt return skills, which is significant for a Redskins coaching staff looking to improve special teams in general, and the punt return depth in particular.What would the CB depth look like if all my thoughts turned into reality?Keeping seven CBs would mean that the Redskins would have to make a cut somewhere else on the roster, and frankly, Texada would easily survive being waived and put onto the practice squad.But if the ‘Skins don’t think they can rely on Alexander to play early in the season, they may make the decision to hold onto the extra CB until the rookies get a bit of regular season experience and the coaches become confident about whom they can rely on.Let’s look at a few more Jay Gruden comments:Fabian MoreauI hear both excitement and concern in Jay Gruden’s voice here.He clearly is high on Moreau, but also doesn’t think Fabian’s ready for prime time... the player needs more work, more repetitions in practice, more snaps in the preseason.Moreau is a second-year player, but because he was injured at the time he was drafted, he got limited preseason work last year, and played mostly special teams in 2017.He needs a heavy dose of seasoning if he’s gonna play a significant number of snaps on defense in 2018.Look for Fabian to be on the field a lot against the Jets and Broncos.Danny JohnsonWhat I’m hearing is that this UDFA has impressed in camp; he’s showing skills, but when Jay uses the word “competitive” like this, in combination with a phrase like “solid all the way round”, it’s a signal that Jay is hedging his praise slightly, especially when Jay goes on to emphasize the player’s special teams ability.Jay is signalling that the coaches like Danny Johnson, but he clearly a backup — not competing for a starting role.PossibilitiesJay lacks guile, so he sometimes struggles when he prevaricates.In a single sentence, he talks about two different scenarios:i. We’ll go with what we have — right nowii. We’ll probably sign another CB — shortlyAnd — oh, by the way — if we need to, we have time to make a move.I’m hearing Jay say that he wants very much to believe that Josh Norman, Quinton Dunbar, Fabian Moreau and 3 or 4 rookies will be able to handle the cornerback position — but Jay isn’t really sure.He’s keeping all his options open.We’re gonna stand pat.For now.But we will probably bring someone else in.Shortly.But we like what we have.But if it doen’t work out, we can still make changes.I suspect they have DRC on speed dial.No matter how much ‘confidence’ Jay expressed in these players on Tuesday, I think the thought of relying on 3 or more rookies to fill out the cornerback depth chart is keeping Jay awake at night.Josh HolseyThe Redskins seem to be going out of their way not to give any details on Holsey or make any comments that commit to a course of action with him.It’s preseason, so the Redskins aren’t required to disclose injury details (note how bothered Todd Bowles was this week that Terrelle Pryor talked to the press about breaking his ankle).It sounds like Holsey may be out there and available in the second half of the season if needed, the same way that I have a packet of fairy dust that can get me out of trouble if I really need it.I’ll be surprised if Holsey sees an NFL field in 2018 regular season or playoffs.
The current CBA has only two years left to run before fans Montae Nicholson Jersey , players and owners could be faced once again with embittered labor negotiations and work stoppages (which means lost games).I wrote a title on an article shell about a month ago; that title read: What should the NFLPA be fighting for in the next CBA?As I often do, I typed a few notes into the body of the story so I could remember what inspired me to want to write it, and I left the shell of the article to sit until I had time to write it.There was no hurry; it could be published anytime in the next year and a half, and, as a university teacher, I have a ton of time available in May, June and July.Well, this weekend offers me a 5-day holiday as Thailand enjoys its traditional 3-day New Year celebration, called Songkran.I sat down to flesh out the article, but realized that some things had changed since I first sketched my notes for it.Chief among the changes is that two of the authors at OverTheCap have published a series of articles on this very topic — well-researched and well-written articles that don’t encompass all of the ideas I had sketched in my notes, but which dive much deeper than I had intended in the ideas they do cover.Of course, they also touch on some ideas that I hadn’t considered at all.One of the thoughts that they put to paper that I hadn’t put into my notes is that of a “Salary Cap Amnesty”.I’ll let the OTC writers explain the concept:I had seen a “cap amnesty” idea floated in the comments section of Hogs Haven just days before I read this article, so OTC doesn’t have a monopoly on the concept, but I felt like Jason Fitzgerald and Vijay Natarajan did a good job of fleshing out the concept with enough detail to make it the sort of recommendation that could be meaningfully negotiated, written into a contract, and enforced with practical effect.To recap the key elements of their proposal:The amnesty would be triggered by a catastrophic injury, similar to the one suffered by Alex Smith (OTC also suggests that crimes committed by players be included).The team would trigger the amnesty themselves, but to avoid its use as a “get out of jail free” card on a bad contract, there would be some limitations:(i) an independent doctor has to examine the player and identify that his injury qualifies. This has a bit of the flavor of the independent neurologist that makes the call under the current concussion protocol.(I might expand this protection to 2 doctors, or perhaps a league panel of doctors to guard against roster & cap manipulation).(ii) a team is limited to using the amnesty a maximum of once per 4-year period (or possibly once per decade).This has the feel of coaches having a limited number of red-flags to be thrown for replay challenges, or the maximum of 2 players allowed to return from IR in a season.OTC recommends that the cap relief take the form of no accelerated dead cap charge.We’re lucky here that OTC used Alex Smith as the example, so no calculation is necessary.The article tells us that, under their proposed amnesty rule, the Redskins would have eaten the $5.4 charge for pro-rated bonus in 2018, but that the $52.6m dead cap hit that the Redskins have to deal with if they release Alex Smith now under the current CBA would disappear like a puff of smoke.Note: The OTC article doesn’t discuss the impact of the well-publicized insurance policy that the Redskins have to protect against Alex Smith catastrophic injury.That wrinkle is beyond the scope of this article as well, so I will simply ignore it, as if it didn’t exist.This is a detail that can be dealt with in the collective bargaining process.If this proposed amnesty had been in place under the current CBA, then, when the full extent of Alex Smith’s injury was realized and confirmed by independent doctor(s), then the Redskins front office could have “thrown a red flag” to initiate the amnesty.Smith would have counted $18.4m against the Redskins 2018 salary cap but Washington would have incurred no further cap charges from the contract.The Redskins would have cut him, paid him his guaranteed $71m (including the money paid prior to the injury), and walked away with Dan Snyder a bit cash poorer, but the team’s salary cap situation largely unimpacted.The team, under the OTC proposal, at least, would have been unable to utilize the Amnesty provision again until 2023 or later.Reviewing Jay Gruden’s comments for insight into the cornerback position battle following Scandrick’s release On Tuesday, the release of Orlando Scandrick brought a lot of clarity to the expected regular season depth chart at cornerback, but there probably isn’t room on the regular season roster to keep every young player that’s having a good training camp.To figure out exactly which CBs are most likely to still be on the team when they line upto play the Cardinals in September, we will examine Jay Gruden’s press conference comments from Tuesday.General comments about the young CBs on the roster:What am I taking away from this?I get the sense that Gruden is talking about five guys who are all making the roster.We know that Josh Norman is gonna start on one side of the field.Jay’s comments tell me that Dunbar will be starting on the other boundary.He talks about the ‘emergence’ (a significant and positive word when Jay Gruden uses it) of Danny Johnson and Fabian Moreau at nickel.I don’t think there’s enough in this comment to say which player is behind the other on the depth chart, though the fact that Moreau is a 2nd year player from last year’s draft, and Johnson is an undrafted rookie may give some hint about the depth chart — at least for the start of the season.He identifies the two Virginia Tech rookie DBs — Stroman (‘18 7th round pick used)and Adonis Alexander (‘19 6th round pick used) — as the other young studs; presumably, the backup boundary corners.Lest there’s any confusion about who’s ahead of whom there, Jay had comments about the player taken in the Supplemental Draft last month. That’s press conference gold right there... Jay specifically identified Alexander as the “sixth” corner, which means he sees five guys ahead of Adonis: Norman, Dunbar, Moreau, Johnson and Stroman.That’s pretty strong confirmation of the expected depth chart.Jay makes it clear that Alexander is not really going to be ready to play defensive snaps at the start of the season, which might open the door a crack for a seventh CB.Jay Josh Doctson Jersey , in the press conference, reiterated his praise for the rookies, but his slight change of wording helps identify who seems to be the leading slot corner, and then tosses in one more name:Jay, this time, focuses on Moreau as the “inside” player.I may be reading too much into this, but I’m thinking that Danny Johnson is showing up as a bit more of an all-purpose player who can backup the boundary or the slot, despite his small size (he’s listed at 5’9”, 181 pounds).Johnson ran a 4.44 40-yard dash at the Combine, giving him the speed to work inside in nickle, and perhaps to run on the boundary with speedy deep-threat receivers as well.With Moreau (6’0”, 205 lbs) playing the slot most of the time, the Redskins will have the flexibility to mix up coverages by swapping playing both Moreau and Johnson in the slot to challenge offensive scheming, and to have Johnson available for boundary duty if needed.Jay Gruden kinda throws Ranthony Texada’s name out there as an afterthought, and the adjective he uses is “good” (rather than something more glowing).Usually, this would make me think Texada was on his way to the practice squad, but there are two things that make me think that Texada still has a shot at the final 53.The first reason is that Adonis Alexander probably won’t be up-to-speed to start the season, but almost certainly needs to be kept on the roster to protect him from being picked up on waivers without making it to the Redskins practice squad.That would leave a young CB group desperately thin.The coaches may opt for a 7th CB, at least to open the season.The second reason for thinking Texada has a shot is that Jay mentioned him one more time:This time Jay is lumping Texada in with Johnson, and the praise is — by Jay’s press conference standards — fairly effusive.He said this in the context that the surprisingly good play by these rookies forced or allowed the coaches to cut Orlando Scandrick.All of a sudden, I’m thinking that the coaching staff might start the season with 7 cornerbacks — especially since both Johnson and Stroman have punt return skills, which is significant for a Redskins coaching staff looking to improve special teams in general, and the punt return depth in particular.What would the CB depth look like if all my thoughts turned into reality?Keeping seven CBs would mean that the Redskins would have to make a cut somewhere else on the roster, and frankly, Texada would easily survive being waived and put onto the practice squad.But if the ‘Skins don’t think they can rely on Alexander to play early in the season, they may make the decision to hold onto the extra CB until the rookies get a bit of regular season experience and the coaches become confident about whom they can rely on.Let’s look at a few more Jay Gruden comments:Fabian MoreauI hear both excitement and concern in Jay Gruden’s voice here.He clearly is high on Moreau, but also doesn’t think Fabian’s ready for prime time... the player needs more work, more repetitions in practice, more snaps in the preseason.Moreau is a second-year player, but because he was injured at the time he was drafted, he got limited preseason work last year, and played mostly special teams in 2017.He needs a heavy dose of seasoning if he’s gonna play a significant number of snaps on defense in 2018.Look for Fabian to be on the field a lot against the Jets and Broncos.Danny JohnsonWhat I’m hearing is that this UDFA has impressed in camp; he’s showing skills, but when Jay uses the word “competitive” like this, in combination with a phrase like “solid all the way round”, it’s a signal that Jay is hedging his praise slightly, especially when Jay goes on to emphasize the player’s special teams ability.Jay is signalling that the coaches like Danny Johnson, but he clearly a backup — not competing for a starting role.PossibilitiesJay lacks guile, so he sometimes struggles when he prevaricates.In a single sentence, he talks about two different scenarios:i. We’ll go with what we have — right nowii. We’ll probably sign another CB — shortlyAnd — oh, by the way — if we need to, we have time to make a move.I’m hearing Jay say that he wants very much to believe that Josh Norman, Quinton Dunbar, Fabian Moreau and 3 or 4 rookies will be able to handle the cornerback position — but Jay isn’t really sure.He’s keeping all his options open.We’re gonna stand pat.For now.But we will probably bring someone else in.Shortly.But we like what we have.But if it doen’t work out, we can still make changes.I suspect they have DRC on speed dial.No matter how much ‘confidence’ Jay expressed in these players on Tuesday, I think the thought of relying on 3 or more rookies to fill out the cornerback depth chart is keeping Jay awake at night.Josh HolseyThe Redskins seem to be going out of their way not to give any details on Holsey or make any comments that commit to a course of action with him.It’s preseason, so the Redskins aren’t required to disclose injury details (note how bothered Todd Bowles was this week that Terrelle Pryor talked to the press about breaking his ankle).It sounds like Holsey may be out there and available in the second half of the season if needed, the same way that I have a packet of fairy dust that can get me out of trouble if I really need it.I’ll be surprised if Holsey sees an NFL field in 2018 regular season or playoffs.