W. Kovacs

Spags will also apparently interview with The Saints tomorrow in New Orleans, according to Schefter...

papz

2012 NFL Free Agents: DL

I did not know that... indeed he is.

A guy on that list I was very high on turned out to be a big flop... Derrick Harvey. Still young though... could be a low risk signing. Okoye and Carriker are also two interesting names as well... as far as bargain shopping I would think.

gandhi1007

London Fletcher is a monster & future HOF, but I feel his price tag will be to high unless we free some money up. On that note......I would love to have a veteran tackling machine like that on this team, though.

iceshack149

Payton has first hand knowledge of Dennis Allen. I wonder if he will, or is able to, bring him in?

FinSaint

I already stated this on another thread, but if the Ravens decide to not pay the 10M option to Ngata to extend his contract to 2017... if I remember correctly - that is one big time UFA target that would instantly make a huge difference in the Saints front 4.

W. Kovacs

$10mil through 2017, right? Not per year...

FinSaint

No.... 10M for the option to extend... as in a signing bonus of 10M in addition to what they had already agreed upon.

His contract years as per the already agreed upon contract extension would be as follows:

2012: base 2.9M & cap hit 17.9M (with the option bonus counting only to 2012).
2013: base 4M & cap hit 9M
2014: base 8.5M & cap hit 13.5M
2015: base 8.5M & cap hit 13.5M
2016: UFA

The 17.9M cap hit is why I think they might not be able to extend his contract. There's an additional signing bonus with the new contract, which is 5M each year explaining the discrepancy between the base salary and the cap hits.

"I'm not bashing people, I'm bashing their opinions because in my opinion their opinion is wrong" - Danno

W. Kovacs

Thank you for the explanation, FinSaint! It was the cap number I was trying to figure out. It does seem to be prohibitive but there are others out there that know a lot more about cap stuff than I could ever hope to know.

LivnaLieTimay

A lot of speculation that with Jim Caldwell being fired it takes Indy out of contention for Spags. I've said from the beginning that I think Spags is the best man for the job. Living in NY, I catch a decent amount of Giants games and was very impressed with his defenses. He seems to do a good job with the D line and getting pressure without having to blitz all the time. I think that with the team we have we are more attractive than the other options.

Obviously, regardless of who we go with as a coordinator we need to make some personnel changes on the defensive side of the ball. I think Spags is also a good judge of talent and is the best candidate to turn our defense around.

FinSaint

Well the salary cap for 2011 was 120.4M and it'll be around the same neighborhood for 2012, so in other words signing Ngata would cost the Ravens a little less than 1/6 of their salary cap (or actually closer to 1/7 of their cap).

That is a lot to spend on one player - as good as he is.