DavidSeven":3510yxko said:
kidhawk":3510yxko said:
I'm surprised nobody has brought up Doug Baldwin. He is in the final year of his 3 year deal as well, and his position is pretty much what Harvin will play. Baldwin will only be a restricted free agent this coming offseason, but with the injuries he had last year and bringing in Harvin, it makes his situation more interesting this year IMO than anyones. He could also be an interesting trade candidate now that we have Harvin.
Well, the cost of a RFA tender is really low compared to what it would cost to retain Rice or Tate. I don't think he's brought up, because we can keep him for at least two more years at a reasonable cost. Not much benefit in letting him walk, especially since he's probably giving you a lot of value for the price.
True, but you still need that other outside receiver. We have Rice outside and Harvin as a slot guy, we'd still need to keep a starting capable wide out. Baldwin doesn't fit that bill like Tate does. We may only have to pay Baldwin $1.5 million as a RFA, but we could fill his position as a backup from the draft for a million less.
Looking through the players under contract next season, there are really only 2 players whose contracts we absolutely cannot cut due to dead money and that is Harvin and Irvin. Anyone else, is fair game for cutting, reworking or anything else they may want to do to keep us within the numbers. With or without an extra $1 million, I think we'll have to get pretty creative to retain both Tate and Rice as our outside receivers.
We also have currently about $4.5 million under the cap which we could use to get Tate signed to an extension and keep the cap number fairly decent the next two seasons, or we could roll that money over and use it to sign guys next year (tate included). So it's still too early to really call