There's not mystery why Miles' performance has declined. He can't keep his hamstrings healthy. But that's clearly not good enough for some people: somehow he has to be doing it on purpose. (And he's been awfully good when he has been healthy, which simply hasn't been that often). Roy Williams had a good year his first year with the big contract, although the signs of his eventual decline were there. And yes, most football players are already in decline by their late 20s. A lot of fans (and some GMs) just don't realize that.
And I'd be willing to bet that for many of these players there were threads where people wanted them signed long term early while they were still cheap to sign. Certainly in the cases of Austin and Ratliff there were multiple threads of posters screaming that Jerry had to sign them right away beacuse they would be too expensive in a year or 2. Hamlin too.
