The NFL 2011 Thread

Shadarr · 2011-12-14T13:01:48.000Z

Donovan McNabb is still out there though. As is Brett Favre.

Omniscia · 2011-12-14T13:04:55.000Z

Shadarr:

Donovan McNabb is still out there though. As is Brett Favre.

Are we talkin’ football or slasher flicks?

Shadarr · 2011-12-14T13:11:13.000Z

Honestly, if I was in a position like the Chiefs or Bears, I would sign Troy Smith (assuming he’s kept working out). It was a lot more fun watching him run around and try to make plays last season than watching Alex Smith stand there and get sacked. He might even win you some games.

Sarkus · 2011-12-14T13:15:55.000Z

Shadarr:

When you’re $32 million under the cap, there kind of is a Costco for backup players. It’s called free agency. You won’t find a starting QB there, but a backup? Absolutely. They could’ve had Vince Young, Bruce Gradkowski, Matt Moore or Derek Anderson. They could’ve made a run at Tavares Jackson, Billy Volek or Seneca Wallace.

Well they did get Orton. And then he got injured, just like every other good player on the Chiefs this year. Its a clear pattern.

I just don’t buy the “under the cap” argument. A lot of teams are under the cap. Seattle spent in free agency on a few big guys and still ended up something like $21m under the cap. The 49ers are neary $17m under the cap, and meanwhile the Panthers are right up against it. The money in and of itself is not the problem and there is no obvious correlation between how much you spend and how much cap room you have. And running up against the cap every year usually leads to a lot of blown cap space down the road being used to pay guys who aren’t on the team anymore.

Instead the problem is that Pioli made poor decisions about who to sign and how to structure the team. Even with an open check book, is there any reason to think he would have signed better guys? Maybe the Chiefs should be better then they are, but the reality is that most teams cannot survive a lengthy list of starters on the DL and still compete.

mkozlows · 2011-12-14T13:29:12.000Z

If you can look at that cap room list, and NOT see the correlation, I’m not sure what you’re looking at. It’s a pretty big correlation, and the obvious outliers like the Colts tend to have pretty clear explanations.

Sarkus · 2011-12-14T13:36:05.000Z

mkozlows:

If you can look at that cap room list, and NOT see the correlation, I’m not sure what you’re looking at. It’s a pretty big correlation, and the obvious outliers like the Colts tend to have pretty clear explanations.

What correlation is that? The top 10 teams in terms of cap space have five playoff contenders (Bears, 49ers, Cowboys, Bengals, Broncos). Those teams all have in excess of $15m available. The top 10 teams in terms of how close they are to the cap have six playoff contenders (Raiders, Texans, Lions, Giants, Falcons, Steelers). I don’t see a big obvious correlation. Like I said above, it isn’t about how much you spend, its how you spend it.

Shadarr · 2011-12-14T13:39:56.000Z

Out of six teams that are more than $20 million under the cap, only the Broncos have more than six wins, and Jesus doesn’t count against the cap. That’s a pretty strong correlation.

Sarkus · 2011-12-14T13:47:22.000Z

Shadarr:

Out of six teams that are more than $20 million under the cap, only the Broncos have more than six wins, and Jesus doesn’t count against the cap. That’s a pretty strong correlation.

How is “more then six wins” the bar of success when we are only 13 games into the season? Look, a totally crappy team that is way under the cap is one thing, but your “bottom six” teams list includes teams that 13 games in actually have a competitive record. Not to mention that choosing $20m as an artificial barrier eliminates 4 very good teams that are in the $15-20m under the cap zone. They didn’t spend the money and still are very good because they have smart people making decisions.

Sarkus · 2011-12-14T13:58:04.000Z

On another note, the NFL just extended all of their TV deals. They will now make $4.9b/year from Fox, NBC, Espn, and CBS in TV money alone. That’s $153m/team if my math is right.

Shadarr · 2011-12-14T14:20:06.000Z

If there was no correlation, you would expect that as a group they would have a .500 record. Instead, there is one team above .500, one team that is a game below .500 and four teams that are all but mathematically eliminated. So if you run your team $20 million below the salary cap you have a 16.7% chance at a winning record. That is not a strong endorsement of the strategy.

Matt_Bowyer · 2011-12-14T14:49:06.000Z

Shadarr:

Out of six teams that are more than $20 million under the cap, only the Broncos have more than six wins, and Jesus doesn’t count against the cap. That’s a pretty strong correlation.

Out of the ten teams that are $15 million under the cap, you get a much different picture, and it includes historically frugal teams like the Bengals and the 49ers. It’s all in where you cut off the data. Bump it up to ten million under to bring in the Redskins and the Browns, it looks like a stronger correlation to your point.

mkozlows · 2011-12-14T15:17:30.000Z

I plugged it into Excel to graph it, and it turns out that every $10 million you’re under the salary cap is going to cost you 0.5 games, based on this season’s records so far. If you exclude the Colts as an obvious outlier, that goes up to 0.8 games.

So by not spending $27 million, the Chiefs are giving up 1.5 to 2.5 games, depending on how you handle the Colts.

Zuwadza · 2011-12-14T17:57:21.000Z

The average cap space is $10.73 million. Teams above this have a combined W/L record of 67-76, teams below the average have a combined record of 133-127. I left the Colts in for this calculation.

Sarkus · 2011-12-14T20:02:50.000Z

Zuwadza:

The average cap space is $10.73 million. Teams above this have a combined W/L record of 67-76, teams below the average have a combined record of 133-127. I left the Colts in for this calculation.

Which is not a huge variation, really. There are exceptions to whatever trend you want to argue, which is why I said all along that its about the people making the decisions, not about the money under the cap.

Zuwadza · 2011-12-14T21:17:35.000Z

Sarkus:

Which is not a huge variation, really. There are exceptions to whatever trend you want to argue, which is why I said all along that its about the people making the decisions, not about the money under the cap.

It would be more interesting to look at over time, but I can’t find a reliable source for that data.

mkozlows · 2011-12-15T08:06:48.000Z

Sarkus:

Which is not a huge variation, really. There are exceptions to whatever trend you want to argue, which is why I said all along that its about the people making the decisions, not about the money under the cap.

Yes, there are exceptions, but if you average it out among the 32 teams, even factoring in all the outliers, you still get 0.5 games lost per $10 million left on the table. So those teams that are leaving $30 million sitting there can be expected to lose 1-2 games more than they’d otherwise have lost. This isn’t a result that’s so shockingly huge as to be implausible, but it is a result that’s significant enough to be meaningful, I think.

Mark_Asher · 2011-12-15T11:46:25.000Z

Losing 1-2 games more per season is enough to knock a lot of teams out of the playoffs.

Sarkus · 2011-12-15T11:54:55.000Z

You guys sure seem quick to attach spending to success based on one years worth of cap information. Especially given the abnormal nature of this year to begin with.

I’ll go back to what I said at the beginning - does anyone really think the problem in KC was not spending up to the cap? Or is it really the poor decisions made by Piolli and his staff? I’m inclined to the latter when talking about whether they should have had better backups to make up for what clearly seems to be exceptionally bad luck when it comes to their starters staying healthy.

Matt_Bowyer · 2011-12-15T11:59:04.000Z

Sarkus:

You guys sure seem quick to attach spending to success based on one years worth of cap information. Especially given the abnormal nature of this year to begin with.

I’ll go back to what I said at the beginning - does anyone really think the problem in KC was not spending up to the cap? Or is it really the poor decisions made by Piolli and his staff? I’m inclined to the latter when talking about whether they should have had better backups to make up for what clearly seems to be exceptionally bad luck when it comes to their starters staying healthy.

I think the problem in KC is not Pioli, it was the coaching. Should we have had a better backup quarterback? Yes. Palko is not NFL-quality. Stanzi I have no idea about – we should have gone after somebody at the talent level of… hell, I don’t know. Jake Delhomme? Derek Anderson? They’re both horrid.

But KC has done a lot to get depth elsewhere. Demorrio Williams is a good backup linebacker. Jon McGraw is an awful starter but a quality backup at safety. LeRon McClain has proven he can be a feature back from his time in Baltimore. Wide receiver is weak, but the drafting of Jonathan Baldwin was a step in the right direction there. Kansas City addressed their depth issues in the offseason.

We’ve signed a lot of good-to-great players to long-term contracts. I feel like Pioli is doing a good job on the talent acquisition front.

Sarkus · 2011-12-15T12:15:17.000Z

Matt Bowyer:

I think the problem in KC is not Pioli, it was the coaching. Should we have had a better backup quarterback? Yes. Palko is not NFL-quality. Stanzi I have no idea about – we should have gone after somebody at the talent level of… hell, I don’t know. Jake Delhomme? Derek Anderson? They’re both horrid.

But KC has done a lot to get depth elsewhere. Demorrio Williams is a good backup linebacker. Jon McGraw is an awful starter but a quality backup at safety. LeRon McClain has proven he can be a feature back from his time in Baltimore. Wide receiver is weak, but the drafting of Jonathan Baldwin was a step in the right direction there. Kansas City addressed their depth issues in the offseason.

We’ve signed a lot of good-to-great players to long-term contracts. I feel like Pioli is doing a good job on the talent acquisition front.

Well either way, that still doesn’t support the argument that spending money is the answer. And this whole debate started in response to the picture of the banner by a Chiefs fan pointing to how far they were under the cap.