Twitter: Jay Ratliff released...Ending His 8-Year Run In Dallas

[jterrell]

If he really cared about the team... He would have retired so that money would come completely off the books and salary cap and let Jerry pay him under the table.

His retirement would have helped about zero.
It is his already paid money that hurt us.

What would have helped is if we didn't renegotiate him earlier this year and then his release would have cost him money instead of him already being paid all but 800K or so. We would have saved about 3m now for an additional 2m at least.

Stephen Jones is a poor cap manager.

 

[xwalker]

His retirement would have helped about zero.
It is his already paid money that hurt us.

What would have helped is if we didn't renegotiate him earlier this year and then his release would have cost him money instead of him already being paid all but 800K or so. We would have saved about 3m now for an additional 2m at least.

Stephen Jones is a poor cap manager.

If they released him in the spring instead of restructuring his contract, they would have owed him an injury settlement. It appears the settlement would have been 50% of his original (non-restructured) 2013 base salary.

 

[Denim Chicken]

ROFL. Sean Lee got virtually the same deal Ratliff had. 10m SB ~18m guaranteed.

Also Jay Ratliff's second contract was the best value in the NFL at the time. He was an All Pro NT for 3m a season. Jerry shrewdly let Chris Canty walk to the Giants and resigned the lesser heralded Ratliff instead.

You cant compare his extension with Lee's contract. Rat's original deal was good until the extension. How old was he? How many years did he have left on his original contract?

 

[visionary]

What everyone is crying about is essentially the same money as Spencer.

What makes this truly unfortunate is to have two guys in one position group in this situation.

you say this as if what we did with spencer is OK
franchising a guy with a career average of 6 sacks/year 2 times is absolutely ludicrous and a great example of why we continue to be mediocre

what is unfortunate is that 2 guys got hurt (we had no control over that),
what is more unfortunate is that we paid 2 guys on the DL around 30 big money (something we did have control over)
what is even more unfortunate than that is that we were trying to pay one of them (spencer) even more money but he did not agree to that deal or we would be in an even bigger hole

talk about bad management

 

[jterrell]

If they released him in the spring instead of restructuring his contract, they would have owed him an injury settlement. It appears the settlement would have been 50% of his original (non-restructured) 2013 base salary.

Which matches my math nearly dollar to dollar.
He got 3.66 in restructure bonus and had 1.6 base left.
Half of that total would be 2.6m in cap hit this versus the 1.6M hit this year and 2.6 off books now. but ~3M less pushed forward to eat next year.
So we ate 2M next year for 1M this year.

Again goes back to our larger, philosophical cap disagreements

 

[Denim Chicken]

you say this as if what we did with spencer is OK
franchising a guy with a career average of 6 sacks/year 2 times is absolutely ludicrous and a great example of why we continue to be mediocre

what is unfortunate is that 2 guys got hurt (we had no control over that),
what is more unfortunate is that we paid 2 guys on the DL around 30 big money (something we did have control over)
what is even more unfortunate than that is that we were trying to pay one of them (spencer) even more money but he did not agree to that deal or we would be in an even bigger hole

talk about bad management

I don't know. If Spencer doesn't get injured and is playing at the level he did last year, not sure we have so much of a problem with the TAG.

 

[jterrell]

You cant compare his extension with Lee's contract. Rat's original deal was good until the extension. How old was he? How many years did he have left on his original contract?

Just stop.

Ratliff was perfectly healthy and had been performing at a very high level for years.
He was arguably the top NT in all of football.
Sean Lee is a great looking young guy who hasn't stayed healthy at all.
He had the Psuedo-redshirt as a rookie and then missed 10 games last year alone.

From 2006 to 2011 Ratliff missed 2 games.

 

[visionary]

I take it you think the Cowboys are the only team that this has happened to?

no, but it seems to happen to us far too often

and not just in terms of what we pay in monetary value but in terms of draft picks

do poorly in FA/signing our own guys and not be able to evaluate talent properly and dole away draft picks for little value is a lethal combination

this is becasue our GM has no frame of reference, being unable to evlauate talent
he just calls "friends of jerry" to ask their opinion and tries to "get a concensus"

 

[jterrell]

you say this as if what we did with spencer is OK
franchising a guy with a career average of 6 sacks/year 2 times is absolutely ludicrous and a great example of why we continue to be mediocre

what is unfortunate is that 2 guys got hurt (we had no control over that),
what is more unfortunate is that we paid 2 guys on the DL around 30 big money (something we did have control over)
what is even more unfortunate than that is that we were trying to pay one of them (spencer) even more money but he did not agree to that deal or we would be in an even bigger hole

talk about bad management

never said it was ok.
but it is the price of doing NFL business.
if guys have success you are going to have to pay them.

dealing in reality and real numbers at least lend some form of honesty to the discussion.
we gave Ratliff 10m.
That was essentially past payment for his All Pro seasons.

Far from ideal but also far from rare.

We just paid Sean Lee a king;s random and no is complaining.
We'll pay Dez a fortune too. Anyone wanna just let him walk?

When a guy is the very best at his position you are going to pay big money for him period.

Hopefully the Spencer injury taught Stephen/Jerry something about the franchise process.

 

[RastaRocket]

 

[Denim Chicken]

Just stop.

Ratliff was perfectly healthy and had been performing at a very high level for years.
He was arguably the top NT in all of football.
Sean Lee is a great looking young guy who hasn't stayed healthy at all.
He had the Psuedo-redshirt as a rookie and then missed 10 games last year alone.

From 2006 to 2011 Ratliff missed 2 games.

You stop. When Jerry hands Lee and extension when he nearing his 30's and has two years left on his deal then you can make comparisons.

 

[GimmeTheBall!]

There wasn't a better Cowboy than him in his prime.

Gee whiz, fella, I kin think of at least 20 better than Ratliff in his prime.
You mean in his era with the Cowboys, right?

 

[Hoofbite]

Haha, wow, so Marinelli is a good coach, yet Jerry doesn't care about good coaching? You are talking about of both sides of your mouth and making no sense.

Marinelli is a good coach but the blind squirrel finding a nut doesn't change the fact that the squirrel is blind.

Wade Phillips
Dave Campo
Outdated Houck

These are all hand-picked Jerry guys and they were hear up until a couple seasons ago.

Jerry cannot identify good coaching. The fact that he cycles through the league so often that he eventually comes upon a good coach doesn't change that.

And no. Jerry doesn't care about coaching because he thinks he can buy enough talent for anyone to be a good coach. This much was established a long time ago.

 

[Hoofbite]

We will literally pay 1 mil less on the cap next year than we would have if Ratliff was on the roster, that's a savings.

If you want to talk about paying the rest towards a guy that's no longer on the roster, that's a different convo.

I completely agree.

It's more of a cost avoidance than a true savings.

 

[visionary]

Such insight.....
I know that you have been one of those talking about cap hell for the past several years. So how do you explain the Lee signing?

nice attempt at trying to change the topic

here is what you said

Ratliff was all pro when he got that contract. The Cowboys took care of a guy that they had been grossly underpaying for years.

It is things like this that make Dallas an attractive FA destination and in the age of the salary cap, it makes a meaningful difference. Compare that to say SD where they do not do things such as this and you can see where it becomes a competitive advantage.

what you lauded in your post is actually a horrible way to do business in the NFL

please show me the results from this so called "competitive advantage" since the start of FA and since jerry has been our GM

the only 2 i can recall would be haley and deion from almost 2 decades back (when it was not known that jerry would overpay his players, that only came later so we cant really ascribe those signings to this 'cache' that you think we have with FAs)

havent seen much evidence of this "competitive advantage" in the last 16-17 years

the teams that have done well are in fact ones that have done the exact opposite of what you recommend..... NE, GB, giants, steelers, you know, teams that have actually won SB chapmioships recently

 

[NoLuv4Jerry]

What smells fishy (not talking about Mike Fisher) is that the team doctors identified it as a sports hernia and Rat's agent said it was a complete tear of the tendons in the groin area. We are talking about four to six weeks (T-New) as opposed to one year recovery.

Could it be that Jerry was trying to force Rat back on the field so he could get his money's worth and save face? Based on Rat's reaction to Jones that's what it smells like to me.

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner folks! This is EXACTLY what happened! People forget that prior to the blow up in the lockeroom...Jerry was mouthing off about guys gutting it out and that he expected Ratliff to be back the next week. Then JERRY goes into the lockeroom after a win and probably tells Ratliff "we need to see you out on that field next week son".....COMPLETELY questioning his injury and toughness. I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW LOST THIS FRANCHISE IS WITH THE OWNER AND GM BEING THE SAME PERSON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Nirvana]

Carlos A. Mendez‏@calexmendez
Garrett says the law is keeping him from talking about how long they thought Ratliff's recovery would take.

 

[Future]

Gee whiz, fella, I kin think of at least 20 better than Ratliff in his prime.
You mean in his era with the Cowboys, right?

Yes, for the third time lol

 

[visionary]

never said it was ok.
but it is the price of doing NFL business.
if guys have success you are going to have to pay them.

dealing in reality and real numbers at least lend some form of honesty to the discussion.
we gave Ratliff 10m.
That was essentially past payment for his All Pro seasons.

Far from ideal but also far from rare.

We just paid Sean Lee a king;s random and no is complaining.
We'll pay Dez a fortune too. Anyone wanna just let him walk?

When a guy is the very best at his position you are going to pay big money for him period.

Hopefully the Spencer injury taught Stephen/Jerry something about the franchise process.

you have brought up this once before in our discussion just with different examples so let me put this to bed

sean lee: just turned 27
dez: 24
geno atkins: 25 (whom you brought up previously)

ratliff was 31 in 2011 when he got his extension

the only people a team should be paying that much money to at or after 30 should be QB, OL, (because players at these positions have shown that they can continue to perform at a high level into their mid 30s) or truly elite players (someone like ware)

neither spencer nor ratliff fall into those categories

 

[NoLuv4Jerry]

A bright side to this situation is that, perhaps, Jerry will learn from this and in the future refrain from handing out these horrible contracts.

The Spencer situation (injury notwithstanding) maybe a sign of this. The Lee contract is a good example of a smart contract and hopefully is model for going forward.

A bright side to this situation is that, perhaps, Jerry will learn from this and in the future refrain from handing out these horrible contracts.

The Spencer situation (injury notwithstanding) maybe a sign of this. The Lee contract is a good example of a smart contract and hopefully is model for going forward.

A bright side to this situation is that, perhaps, Jerry will learn from this and in the future refrain from handing out these horrible contracts.

The Spencer situation (injury notwithstanding) maybe a sign of this. The Lee contract is a good example of a smart contract and hopefully is model for going forward.

Won't happen. When you do NOT know what you are doing. When you cannot tell an apple from an orange. You do the knee jerk thing. Which is do NOTHING. Because you do not know what to do. Jerry, feeling burned by the Leonard Davis signing...simply refused to PROPERLY address the interior of the OL because of it. That is the behaviour of a man that runs a football organization like a NORMAL business. And that is the problem....this is NOT a normal business!!!! If had the ability to PROPERLY assess his product and the needs of his product....he would have NEVER paid what he paid for Davis. And he would have realized that Romo is in the prime of his career and getting the OL right is the BEST chance to win.

I stated at the time that I would not reveal my sources. But I am frustrated today. So I will provide a dead giveaway clue. I spoke to a FORMER Cowboy that is in the HOF that KNOWS Leonard Davis pretty well. And he said had Jerry asked him about Leonard Davis....he would have told him to NEVER do what Jerry did. Should not be hard to figure out.