News: Getting a handle, both understanding and emotions, of the Dallas off season

[CCBoy]

....Romo’s 2015 salary-cap number of $27.8 million, the highest in the league, has been a major obstacle in the Cowboys’ ability to actualize the kind of go-for-broke plan the quarterback was pitching to Jones.
Team officials have expressed reluctance about restructuring Romo’s contract to lower that gargantuan figure because it would only create more financial burdens in the future. This fiscally responsible philosophy has governed the way the Cowboys have operated in free agency since the new league year began Tuesday.

As other teams acquired players in bulk, Dallas took a passive approach while watching its competitors poach six former Cowboys: Murray, defensive lineman Henry Melton, receiver Dwayne Harris, right tackle Jermey Parnell and linebackers Bruce Carter and Justin Durant.

Together, their contracts could total as much as $127.8 million — the inflated price attached to the success the Cowboys achieved last season, when they went 12-4 and made the divisional round of the playoffs.

But that sum was money the Cowboys weren’t going to spend on veterans less valuable than the roster’s younger talent, a group expected to command bigger dollars in the future. So, Dallas stayed thrifty.

The Cowboys acquired four players: running back Darren McFadden, linebacker Jasper Brinkley and two fullbacks, Jed Collins and Ray Agnew. McFadden, the most notable addition, agreed to a two-year deal worth as much as $5.85 million with a signing bonus of $200,000 — a meager amount that invites minimal risk.

“At the end of the day, this is about finding the best way to collectively fit all of the individual pieces together, in terms of talent, offensive players, defensive players and dollars — under the salary-cap structure — that gives you the best chance to have a championship team,” Jones said in a statement last week.

It’s not an easy puzzle to cobble together. As of Saturday, the Cowboys were $8.8 million under the NFL-mandated payroll ceiling with plenty of work left to replenish a roster that has holes on the defensive line, at cornerback and in the offensive backfield, where Murray once stood.

That’s not much available space, which is why it’s interesting that the Cowboys haven’t restructured Romo’s contract to create as much as $12.8 million in cap room for 2015. When Romo was signed to a six-year deal in March 2013, it seemed the Cowboys had designs on making a serious run at the Super Bowl by 2015.

Maximizing Romo’s talent at an age when he could still perform at an elite level became an organizational priority. In light of the Cowboys’ surprising run last season, it seemed it would remain one. But now the Cowboys appear unwilling to realize that goal at the expense of financial stability and long-term health of the club.

“The question just becomes strategy,” executive vice president Stephen Jones said recently. “Do you want to push money out in order to have money now? Sometimes that hasn’t necessarily worked great for us.”

So the Cowboys have taken a different tack. It’s why the Cowboys let Murray walk after he helped ease the burden for Romo during a season when the quarterback played better than ever. It’s why they haven’t been big players in free agency. And it’s why they have yet to shave Romo’s enormous cap number.



Sabin: How Tony Romo's contract is getting in way of QB's desire to win now
By RAINER SABIN
http://www.***BANNED-URL***/sports/...-getting-in-way-of-qb-s-desire-to-win-now.ece

 

[endersdragon]

For the right player at the right price, I think they would be more than glad to restructure Romo for the future. They do have a lot more cap room next year and are losing nobody of significance other than Bryant and Crawford (who I think will both be restructured yet this year and will cost us minimally next year), they just feel that most of the guys that have went off the board so far have gotten too high of deal (I have been checking out websites like Walterfootball and the like lately and they mostly seem to agree) or aren't the right fits for the system (while I would have loved Knighten at 1 year 4 million, they didn't like him as much and I can respect that). There are still several players who have a history of playing at an elite level left in free agency, so now is not the time for doom and gloom, there will be time enough for that in August.

 

[waving monkey]

Good article

 

[jazzcat22]

For the right player at the right price, I think they would be more than glad to restructure Romo for the future. They do have a lot more cap room next year and are losing nobody of significance other than Bryant and Crawford (who I think will both be restructured yet this year and will cost us minimally next year), they just feel that most of the guys that have went off the board so far have gotten too high of deal (I have been checking out websites like Walterfootball and the like lately and they mostly seem to agree) or aren't the right fits for the system (while I would have loved Knighten at 1 year 4 million, they didn't like him as much and I can respect that). There are still several players who have a history of playing at an elite level left in free agency, so now is not the time for doom and gloom, there will be time enough for that in August.

It's the off season, doom and gloom lives here and will continue until we will be are 6-2.
It was horrible last year. And after game 1 debacle against SF, and even after we won the next 2 games. It wasn't until beating Seattle it changed. Then there were still a few. But most of concern of Romo's back. But rightfully so at point of the season.

 

[big dog cowboy]

As other teams acquired players in bulk, Dallas took a passive approach while watching its competitors poach six former Cowboys: Murray, defensive lineman Henry Melton, receiver Dwayne Harris, right tackle Jermey Parnell and linebackers Bruce Carter and Justin Durant.

Together, their contracts could total as much as $127.8 million — the inflated price attached to the success the Cowboys achieved last season, when they went 12-4 and made the divisional round of the playoffs.

Almost $130M for Murray, Melton, Harris, Parnell, Carter and Durant. Seriously? If you would have told me a week ago that is what we would be looking at today I would have said you were cockoo for cocoa puffs. That is ridiculous.

 

[CCBoy]

Almost $130M for Murray, Melton, Harris, Parnell, Carter and Durant. Seriously? If you would have told me a week ago that is what we would be looking at today I would have said you were cockoo for cocoa puffs. That is ridiculous.

Some real 'big boy' pants there for sure...but that level needs not only to be nurtured in the youthful side of the roster, but improved upon as well. That is as striking too.

There is a credibility view that is not being seen in the now, and that makes the above a hard pill to swallow.

 

[mahoneybill]

Almost $130M for Murray, Melton, Harris, Parnell, Carter and Durant. Seriously? If you would have told me a week ago that is what we would be looking at today I would have said you were cockoo for cocoa puffs. That is ridiculous.

To me a lot of this is driven by the league mandating you will spend I believe in the 80+ percent of the cap, and teams needing to meet that as the cap rises.

It's not about real value anymore, to a degree it's inflated payments where in many cases they aren't deserved

 

[CCBoy]

What's the Optimum Allocation of Free Agent Money? By Brian Burke
http://www.advancedfootballanalytic...-s-the-optimum-allocation-of-free-agent-money

As I was thinking about the enormous Suh contract, I wondered what the best allocation of resources would be for free agent players. In other words, would a team be better off with a few superstars plus a bunch of role players? Or would it be better off with a squad full of relatively evenly paid and evenly talented players? Roster construction in the NBA certainly seems to adhere to the superstar model, but the NFL is different in many ways.

I looked at this question several years ago, but didn't realize what I had stumbled on. I found that teams with higher median salaries outperformed teams with lower median salaries, holding overall team salary equal. In other words, teams without a lot of heavily paid players tended to win more games. A few years back, I also found that, for offensive lines, median salaries correlated with performance better than total salaries. And I now understand, mathematically, why this must be the case.

Before I go any further, let's take a look at the value curve for free agents. The chart below plots all defensive players in the 6th or later year of service at all positions from the 2006-2014 season. It shows +Expected Points Added according to annual player cap hit. There's an unmistakable shape to the curve.

http://i1039.***BLOCKED***/albums/a479/hatch113/def%20epa%20by%20salary_zpswkkrh2m2.png

As we'd expect, despite the noisy data, it's clear that players are paid more for greater production. Despite all the criticism they get, GMs appear to be pretty good at their jobs. But there is an unmistakable trend--there are diminishing returns across the range of salaries. Here is an aggregate plot that combines all the positions.

http://i1039.***BLOCKED***/albums/a479/hatch113/def%20epa%20by%20salary%20all%20pos_zpsmtxn02om.png

The free-agent value curve is concave. In other words, it shallows out and bends downward as salary increases. My hunch is that the true curve may not be this extreme due to how salaries are often structured for the very top players, especially older players. They tend to be back-loaded, kicking cap costs into the future in exchange for performance now. Still, the fact that the curve bends downward, at least to some degree, is as certain as these things can be.

Looking at this curve, I was wondering what is the best allocation of a limited budget on free agents? In a bricklayer world, a GM would purchase as many players as possible at the point on the curve with the highest ratio of production to cost. In that scenario, he'd want to hire the maximum number of league-minimum players (at 14 +EPA/$M). But football is not a pure bricklayer system. There can only be 11 players on the field at once. So would it be better for the GM to hire a couple super-high value guys and then fill out the rest of the depth chart with lesser-paid players, or try to spread payroll around as evenly as possible? The idea would be to maximize "performance density," that is, to squeeze as much production onto the field within those 11 players as possible.

Let's consider an abstract example. Say a GM needs to find 11 defenders, all free-agents, and he has decided that he wants to budget no more than $44M of his cap on these FA starters. Assume that there are plenty of players available at each position and at each price point, and assume individual performance is additive. Given the value curve above, the optimum allocation is to distribute the cap funds evenly. The maximum production possible is achieved when he would spend $4M on each FA, giving him 352 +EPA on the field. No other allocation can produce a higher total.

In fact, it's mathematically provable that given a budget cap (C) and a limited number of players (n), that for any concave value function (one with diminishing returns), the optimum allocation is an even distribution at a price point of C/n.

If the value curve bent upward (was convex), the optimum would be to get one of the highest paid players possible, and fill in the rest of the roster with replacement level players.

Of course, no team ever fields 11 FA veterans as starters, and they need depth, and there are various positions (players are not commoditized substitutes), and so on. But the concept remains in force: the best allocation is the one closest to an even distribution. If a GM has 4 spots to fill and wants to spend no more than $16M per year, he'd be better off with four $4M guys rather than one $13M guy and three $1M guys.

To be perfectly clear, I'm not advocating a GM spend no more than $X on any one player or that the curve in the chart above is perfectly accurate. I'm not saying that all defenders are interchangable parts and I'm not pretending that there is some magical buffet line of healthy free agents to shovel onto your lunch tray.

What I am saying is that there is a mathematical reason for what we generally observe--Enormous free agent splurges often don't translate into winning. Teams with relatively even distributions of salary appear to win more often, a signal detectable despite the noise of year-to-year variability. In practice, this suggests the Dolphins would be better off bolstering multiple positions with their FA funds, rather than putting them into a single player like Suh, regardless of how good he may be.

Additionally, despite the propaganda poster above, I am not claiming all players should be paid equally, regardless of their performance. They quite rightly should be paid according to their (expected) performance. However, from the perspective of a GM, his team would be better off with as even a spread of performance among players as practical, and that translates into relatively even salaries.

A final note--I would suspect quarterbacks are an exception to the rule. Their role is singularly unique and important, and deficiencies at that position are very difficult to overcome with added performance at other positions.

 

[CF74]

At $27.8-Mill per this is Romo's year to lead us to victory in a Super Bowl. We have the O-Line, we have the receivers, we have enough backs to grind by committee, and most importantly Romo should be healthier and stronger for the work ahead.

We have got to focus on that D-Line or that $27.8-Mill will be all for naught. The time is now, build that front line already!!! I want a Top 12 defensive front at the very least, Do It....