At the beginning of the off season we could have restructured all of (and this is off the top of my head) Tyron, Dlaw, Coop, Martin and I believe there was one other (not Zeke.) All of the guys looked worth keeping for at least the next couple years. Anyway, those restructures would have put us somewhere under 20 million for this season.
There are far too many mechanisms available to allow the FO to use cap as an excuse. Sorry, I'm not buying it.
Besides that, if Gregory wanted to actually stay, they could've simply had him agree to a verbal and signed him after more maneuvering. They could have pressed on Dlaws deal as well.
It's blatantly obvious they didn't make certain moves in advance because they never intended on keeping Coop. Trading Coop was not ever a necessity. It was because they didn't value him period.
Yep, they already made their decision and that was to move on from Coop way before March. This was reinforced by the other (proposed) moves....that's the decision and whilst it worsened the roster, the bigger picture is that it's all but reset the CAP issues and at last put a stop to just relying on our guys....move on and push your youngsters.
I am sure there wasnt a market for Coop...for it to happen naturally a team would have to
approach us and say "we want Coop" (if we brought it up the cat would be out of the bag).....knowing our CAP situation and that there was a very good chance that we'd cut him WHY WOULD A TEAM MAKE AN OFFER A GOOD TRADE, they'd just wait it our, no need to push it. Nobody has responded to the strategy we took which was to hope two teams would give something for him (two teams up his trade value, as I say Jets/Browns)....it ultimately failed, but that's a result of there being no market for Coop (maybe due to rumors that top WR's may be become available....and the value was in the Hill's of this world, regardless of price).
Mechanisms for using the CAP.....THATS WHAT GOT US IN THIS POSITION IN THE FIRST PLACE....there are no contracts to restructure, we are maxed out on the big contracts....the whole idea is to draw a line in this cycle of keeping hold of contracts that kill us. If we restructured Coop, DLaw and signed Gregory then the 2023 CAP , would officially be HELL.
I am sure Jerry realised the mistake he'd made when we didnt get Gregory and realised we had the money to restructure Coop....but the world doesnt always follow how we plan it.
Your points regarding Gregory's (verbal agreement) or Dlaw (pressing him to sign) just show that youre looking at this with the benefit of hindsight.
Im no apologist for the Jones, (and think our no.1 need is a strong GM), but I can see what we've done , even if it means we've taken a roster hit for 2022. Sometimes you have to take the hard decisions, rather than keep kicking the can (on a team that was further out than we thought going into the playoffs).
we already had restructured everyone we could and that left just the unrestructurable ..... Zeke and Tyron.
