Originally posted by Giedi:
Man the current regime of Salary Cap, Free agency, and draft just makes it so hard to retain talent. It's good for the game overall, but it's brutal on each organization. I don't think there is a set in stone time table regarding Salary Schedule with injuries, retirements, and unretirements (Lloyd for example) holdouts etc... I do like the 2014 draft and a lot of those players made the team - which is good for the cap and long term success of the team. We do need skill players and we have devoted cap space to land some talent to our O Line, but I can see cracks forming with the injury to Kilgore, the Boone holdout, and the continual nagging injuries to Davis and Iupati. It's that story of syssyphus. You roll up the boulder to the top, and just when you almost get to the top and can roll it to the other side, darn thing slips from you and you have to do it all over again.
It's an interesting cap set up with the rookie salaries lowered. My sense is that teams will need to do what Baalke has done by bringing in good solid depth, while letting major vets go, and hope the coaches can keep developing replacements. The niners spend money on key FAs in some cases, Justin Smith, but not in more expensive skill positions. All the FAs they have brought in at the skill positions were lower ranked or trades--Boldin and Johnson being two of the best.
My concern is that this is a formula for maintaining good solid teams but not for building great teams. May cause coaches to dumb down their systems to accomodate turn over. But...I guess any cap system could be accused of this.
Also see some issues cropping up from the league being QB centric. It's vital to get and keep a great QB at almost all cost. But then a team like Denver comes along and finds a way to bring in FAs. Talib and Ware are near top scale (10m per yr) and Ward was mid range. Most teams have ten or more guys with no guaranteed money going forward (49er have 14).
Glad it's Baalke's problem and not mine!
