This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!
If it's next year, he plays this year for 2.75 million and plays the next four years for "VJax money" of 11 million per year. That's 5 years 46.75 million-- only 3.25 million less than the Steelers reportedly offered. Yeah, that's smart.
If we franchise him, then he's waiting a total of 2 years until he gets his longterm deal with guaranteed money, or when he would have only 3 years left on his 5 year deal we offered him that was a 70's pube shy of VJax contract. Ya shoulda signed it when it was on the table Mikey!!
no.reportedly, sanders will take over, so look out for the new darling in return leagues.....
how about coming in and tearing his acl -- does that hurt him?
Until he gets a long term contract with guaranteed money he is rolling the dice every day he gets out of bed. He is going to have to report at some point this season so if he doesn't take a long term deal with the Steelers he is taking a big risk when he does eventually report. It doesn't seem likely now but he could be in the same situation next season if the Steelers slap the franchise flag on him.
Dropped to the 6th in a FPC draft last night.
Any player who gets the franchise tag is automatically guaranteed the average of the top-five players at his position.If the Steelers franchised him he would immediately sign the offer since he would get nearly $15 million guaranteed for 2013, much more than what he's asking for and a heck of a lot more than what the Steelers are willing to pay him so they will NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER franchise him.He obviously has set his price and the Steelers have obviously set a different price.Their best option isn't to screw with him thereby poisening the well for any other good faith negotiations in the future.They can sit and hope and pray he comes in but it seems obvious he's not going to sign for what they have offered him so that is a passive and weak stance that more than likely will not be successful.They can sit and expect him to sign late in the year where he would be unmotivated and unwilling to risk injury before he can sign a long term contract, another weak and passive stance.Or they can tell his agent to find a buyer but set a 'reasonable' price. They dumped Santonio for a fifth round pick, not the best they could do so a 'reasonable' price would be a conditional pick next year where they would have a high probability to get at least a third round pick, up to a second if he really produces.The sticking point is that Wallace didn't just outperform his contract for one season. He had over 750 yards his rookie year and scored and then had back-to-back 1,000 yard seasons and proved to be a scorer and deep threat every year.He's got every right to demand this extension because he's already produced. Brown only has produced one year and he's never been a scorer or deep threat and now they have taken him off of special teams so the extra added benefit of him being versatile is thrown out the window.My opinion is that I think the Steelers made the wrong call in snubbing Wallace in favor of Brown. That is why I've been pazzled watching this whole thing unfold.
They didn't snub Wallace. They offered him a 5 year $50 million deal. He didn't sign it. They offered Brown 5 years at $42 million. He did. Let's not make it seem like they gave Wallace an insulting offer her was sure to decline - just because teams like Tampa and Washington overpaid players in order to get them to come to a crappy team doesn't mean the Steelers have to acknowledge that as "fair market value."
When they made the offer to Brown they did so knowing they took whatever money that 'could' have worked to sign Wallace away and gave it to Brown.They did not need to sign Brown now.They announced publically that they were breaking off talks with Wallace and then turned around and signed Brown with the money that they 'could' have used to make a deal work with Wallace.My opinion is that if I were Wallace I would justifiably feel snubbed. That is how I see it.
They didn't need to sign Brown, but they obviously thought (wisely, IMO) that if the money/cap space they had earmarked for Wallace's long-term deal was going to go to waste (i.e. he was not going to accept their best offer) then they might as well get Brown locked-up long term now, avoid the same situation with him next year, and deal with Wallace on a year-to-year basis. It's the type of smart move that keeps the Steelers rolling along year after year - they don't overpay and they attempt to lock up their young, breakout stars early and keep them in the fold through their prime years.
I don't agree.I view a guy who outproduces his contract in three consecutive seasons providing me more value than a guy who has only produced one season.The added benefits that Wallace brings as a scorer and deep threat and being a more tested and proven commoditity has more value than a guy whose added benefit is as a return man especially now that the team has removed those duties from him so they are looking at not only removing the added benefit of taking Browns off of return duties but they also lose the added benefit of Wallace's deep speed and scores.I see Wallace as bringing more value and I would have paid him this year and then waited to see what Brown did this year before I would reward him with an extension.Sanders is a wild card. He could suprise but he's even less proven than Brown and so far hasn't been able to establish any added benefits and he has to prove he's not injury prone.I would have simply signed Wallace and then kept my options open on Brown and Sanders.Right now the team doesn't have the added benefits of a, deep threat, a proven scorer, a proven return man.That doesn't seem wise to me and its not how I would have conducted business.
My guess is that the Steelers already asked Wallace's agent to set a 'reasonable' price since they began negotiating after last season. The problem is the two sides have differing opinions on what is a reasonable price. The Steelers have a long-standing policy of not negotiating with players that hold out of training camp and Wallace and his agent were were well aware of this. Wallace knows that as long as he holds out then there is no hope of getting a long term agreement with guaranteed money from the Steelers.
We're talking two different things.I am talking about 'reasonable' draft pick price that the Steelers would get in any trade.
No idea about the agent and numbers but his agent is saying he didn't tell Mike to holdout.
Fair enough but you talk as if it is a matter of sign one or the other. The Steeler identified Wallace as their #1 priority and made him an offer of what they thought was fair. He turned it down so they signed Brown. According to the team they would still like to sign Wallace to a long term deal and there is a means to do so but nothing will happen until Wallace reports.You have a right to your opinion but he Steelers have a pretty good track record in dealing with players and managing the cap so I think they know what they are doing. You certainly can't argue with the results.
The thing that continually seems to elude both you and TT is that they tried to sign Wallace. Obviously, they value him more than Brown if they offered him $10M per to Brown's 8. Wallace wouldn't sign the deal they offered. People keep saying : "they should have paid Wallace" - does that mean they should have paid him whatever he wanted? To hell with the cap, just give him whatever he demands? That's not how the Steelers do things. They determine his value to the team and offer him accordingly, if he turns it down after extended good-faith negotiations, at some point you have to move on. Brown was the team MVP last year and is two years younger than Wallace, and was willing to sign for 80% of what Wallace turned down. It's good business. If they paid Wallace $11-12M per (after he faded badly down the stretch last year to boot) with half of it guaranteed and he doesn't produce consistent WR1 numbers for 5 years, they've hamstrung themselves with his contract and lose other players they can't fit under the cap. brown's deal is structured to where they can cut him after 2-3 years and take a minimal cap hit. Wallace wasn't willing to sign such a deal.It's not a matter of who is better. If you like Budweiser a little better than Miller Lite, and Budweiser is $20 a case and Miller Lite is on sale for $13.99, and you only have $20 in your pocket, you might get Miller Lite because you'll want to hang on to that $6 to get dinner later.
You're a blind homer with a basement full of Steelers gear.
I think we can both agree that you are not Kevin Colbert and I'm not TT.My take is the Steelers knew they had a problem last year when Brown started to produce and saw that they had three guys at WR and that they had two contract extentions that they needed to get done.Pittsburgh has a history of not paying top dollar, they do, you know it, I know it, its not a secret. Pittsburgh history has lots of examples of them letting guys who could still play walk but they typically haven't done this with guys as young and talented as Wallace unless they were problem children like Plax or Santonio and that is what I felt was behind this miscalculation IMHO.I don't agree with the takes that Wallace is asking too much money. I think he's in the right ballpark of what he wants/expects to be paid for what he has to offer.Brown doesn't bring that same benefits.The Steelers made a choice and I don't agree with it, simple as that.I don't think it was wise but I don't think it will hurt as much due to Haley's return to ground and pound run to set up the pass instead of Arian's stacked WR sets.Its going to be a different offense so coaching philosophy is another aspect that no-one has really mentioned yet.As I said, I would not have made that choice if it were my call. I would have done exactly what I mentioned, sign Wallace and wait on Brown and Sanders.Now it seems the ship has sailed and I think you will notice an uptick in the run game and less emphasis on the pass.They can't run those stacked sets now anyways and it will probably work out and you won't mind if Wallace is gone even if he continues to produce since he's young and talanted. The Steelers probably will return to a more smash mouth run based offense and he'll be a distant memory but its not how I would have done it.
They did make a choice, however it's not an either or choice they made. Signing Brown did not limit their ability to sign Wallace, it simply pre-empted a repeat of the situation with Brown is all. This isn't a binary situation.'Bracie Smathers said:
Everything coming out of training camp to date says the opposite. They are expanding the no-huddle packages and giving Ben more play calling freedoms within those packages. If anything they are emphasizing the passing game and involvement of the RB's in that game. With or without Wallace the Steelers will remain a passing oriented team, and may actually increase their run/pass splits from everything I am hearing/seeing.I am constantly surprised that people who do not follow this team closely feel as if they are in a better position to know how the team should operate both on/off the field and how the players will produce than those who do follow it closely 24/7. There is rah-rah homer input that can be discarded and then there is informed homer input...I will take the latter every day of the week over the neutral casual observers input.Bracie, you are at least well intentioned with your points no matter how off base. TT simply proves how little he knows about the Steelers organization and NFL contracts in general (even though he just knows he has a giant IQ) every time he posts.'Bracie Smathers said:
That's fair, and you're entitled to your opinion, I'm not trying to put you down. I'm just saying it's not as easy as just saying "I would have signed Wallace." They tried. Whether you, me, or anyone else feels that the money that he is asking for is a fair price or not is moot. The Steelers are only going to pay X amount of dollars because they have an entire roster to fill and they have to determine what a player's value is. They've signed Woodley, Polamalu, Roethlisberger, Brown, etc.. to sizable extensions over the past few years, so they do have a track record of being able to hold on to their young studs. They may want/expect guys to take a very mild discount off of what they might fetch on the open market because they are a frugal organization and offer stability, a winning culture, and loyalty to their players. What premium a player places on these intangibles is up to that individual player. The guys I mentioned earlier obviously placed a higher value on them than Wallace does.If Roethlisberger holds out in a couple of years and wants a 5 year, $100 million extension, he likely wouldn't get it. Is it "fair market value" considering he has 2 rings and it would put him in line with what the Mannings and Breeses of the world are making? Possibly. But the Steelers are probably not going to shell out that kind of money, even to their most valuable player. If he then walks, it's easy to say if they struggle breaking in a new QB that they "should have just signed Roethlisberger." However, doing so could have suffocated them against the cap ceiling for years afterward if Ben's play tails off. They have to keep the organization's overall health in mind first and foremost.'Bracie Smathers said:
If that's what he's looking for then he should demand a trade to San Francisco.
The fans and the front office have the same goal in mind : maintaining a standard of excellence and trying to achieve long-term success. I find the fact that you believe that Steelers' homers should side with one player over the team as a whole because he outperformed his current contract extremely strange.Let me ask you one question : lets say Wallace and his agent came to the Steelers and said : "Look, we'll take a 5 year, $100 million deal. You can pay us $25M in a signing bonus and pay only $1M this year, but then he gets $18.5M a year for the next four years when the cap goes up." Should the Steelers agree to that? Just yes or no will do.
I never thought the Steelers made a bad call by signing AB over Wallace. I think AB is fantastic and posted that before. He deserves every penny of his new contract. I have posted a lot of good things about the Steelers that have been overlooked, such as their ability to draft very well. Bracie's position is that they made a bad move by signing AB over Wallace. My position is that this is how parity in the league works, you can't keep all your good players when their contract is up, because there is a salary cap.I do not even think it is a slap in the face to Wallace by signing AB over him. Others do. I think it is business. As such, being a business, the Steelers should trade Wallace and make the distraction go away. Get what you can for him and use your ability to draft well by picking up a second or a third rounder next year.
I'm not angry, I simply get frustrated when I have to explain a basic point over and over and over again and it doesn't sink in. I wouldn't make a good grade-school teacher.
Many things you say here are accurate. It's when you post things like "they can't afford him /thread" that people get annoyed. You come off like a know-it-all - and the worst kind of know it all, the one who is completely and utterly wrong, but stomps his foot and refuses to listen to reason. Saying they can't afford him is ludicrous. They could cut three guys tomorrow and give him $15M this year if they wanted to. They could give him $5M this year and give him a whopping signing bonus they can prorate over the life of the deal. There are countless ways to make it work. Almost any team can afford any player, the crux of the matter is that all 32 organizations must evaluate their players to determine what each guy is worth within the structure of the salary cap system. They did that with Wallace and determined that their max offer was going to be $10M per. He turned it down, they asked him to report in order to continue negotiating, he held out, they moved on. We'll see where it goes from here.I'm not arguing with most of your points, just the one in which you repeatedly say that it wasn't a cost/benefit decision, it was a simple matter of the "Steelers being broke." Which, given Brown's extension and the fact that they're still ~$5.5M under the cap, is clearly not the case. Had you simply reasoned things out from the get-go, like Bracie did, I would have responded to you like I did Bracie.
I could have phrased it differently, but then I would have had no fun.
That's cool as long as you don't get all bent out of shape when I call you out on it.I could have phrased it differently, but then I would have had no fun.
That is the best hand for Wallace to play, continue the holdout until late in the season.The best hand for the Steelers to play is to have his agent seek out a trade where his agent has pre-negotiated an extension that whatever team he finds agrees to, at least that is how I see it.
Next year is borderline irrelevant as of right now. We have no idea what will play out over the next few months. they cut Hines Ward, James Farrior, Aaron Smith, etc.. this off-season when they were in bad cap shape, they can do the same next year.
What incentive do the Steelers have to trade Wallace? No team wanted him at the cost of a 1st round price tag and the Steelers will likely get a 3rd round comp pick if he leaves next year. The goal here is to win a Super Bowl, playing with Wallace for 16, 10 or 6 regular season games still gives them their best chance this year.I don't think Wallace and the Steelers are done negotiating and I suspect Wallace will report to the team in the next few weeks.'Bracie Smathers said:
Yea, this is James Harrison's last year as a Steeler. Same with Foote and a few others.'Evilgrin 72 said:
Sounds like the same logic the Chargers used with Vincent Jackson. Many people don't agree with this, but IMO had the Chargers gotten Jackson in for the entire 2010 season, they would have made the playoffs. But they didn't, and his 6 game stint was essentially too late to help them.So I disagree that keeping him and getting him in for the final 6 games gives them their best chance this year.
and this is precisely the reason the Steelers generally contend for the Superbowl year in and year out
Apples to oranges. Completely different culture in Pittsburgh. The Steelers won a Super Bowl with Hines Ward, Cedric Wilson and Antwaan Randle El at WR. Even without Wallace the Steelers still have a legit WR1 (Brown) and two solid secondary WR. The 2010 Chargers started Malcom Floyd and Leegedu Naanee, borderline NFL WRs.
Foote almost definitely. Probably Mendenhall too - possibly Harrison, depends what's going on with his back. Colon could be history depending on how he performs at G, Hampton is probably playing his last year, etc.
The Steelers would still like to sign Wallace to a long-term deal so all he needs to do to get the ball rolling again is show up for camp. If he doesn't and/or they are unable to work out a deal I think they would rather have his services for 2012 and receive the compensatory pick (and also have the option to franchise him) than to trade him to another team.
Right. So then, when the Steelers do not have enough money to pay him, he has no other option but to play for the 2.7MM because he can be fined for not showing up after he signs. Funny how that works out really good for the Steelers. I don't believe that even you believe what you said. I can just see it now, Wallace signs his tender and then all the homers start discussing how "if Wallace won't sign a team friendly deal, then just force him to play for the 2.7MM tender". There is no way Wallace or his agent is that dumb. They know the cap situation even if the homers are ignoring it.The only way Wallace reports is if a deal is in place. No other chance until week 11.
The Steelers will not negotiate with a player that is holding out so I guess we' ll see him week 11 then. He will also be 1.7 million poorer and still runs the risk of injury when he returns.
