I found the flaw in that methodology. When you look at the average salary numbers for LT vs. WR, as Ice wants you to do, it looks striking at first. 9.5 million for left tackles vs 2.5 for WRs? Maybe he's right.ericanadian wrote: ↑Mon Apr 13, 2020 3:19 pmI think your methodology for establishing value makes no sense, but otherwise, I think we’re largely on the same page for the rest of this, just different opinions on what it means. No point in continuing to beat dead horses. Good discussion.Ice wrote: ↑Sat Apr 11, 2020 4:31 pmRather than argue with you about how much a top player is paid I will simply post a link with the Average NFL Salary Breakdown by position.ericanadian wrote: ↑Sat Apr 11, 2020 10:58 am
Houston was only able to manage one sack and 3 QB hits and 3 TFL against the Chiefs. Clowney got 1.5 sacks, 3 TFL and 3 QB hits in his two playoff games. Even miscast, I think he’s superior to who they replaced him with.
Seattle is letting him walk because he wants $20M/season and they have $12M in cap space and other needs. He probably isn’t worth $20M, but the fact that teams can’t give him a physical when he does have recent injury issues is certainly a factor here just as it is with guys like Cam Newton. I also wasn’t blasting O’Brien on this point only countering your point that this was somehow a win for O’Brien because he got two role players and a third for a guy that might have helped them hold on to the lead they had against KC. Pretty sure that third got them nothing in the playoffs and Mingo & Martin combined for 22 snaps and one tackle against the Chiefs.
I didn’t make any comments about Seattle’s decision making and I don’t think Hopkins is a god. I simply think he’s worth more than a 2nd round pick and he’s certainly worth more than Cooks. Maybe David Johnson will surprise and reset the clock to 2017. The Cooks pickup looks better if the season is delayed and he has more time to recover. He’s got a lot of talent and I’m not foolish enough to think Goff was able to maximize it given that he’s always struggle to maximize elite deep threats.
The top LT averages $16.5M a year, which would put them somewhere around 7th in the WR list. The top WR averages $22M a year. Tell me again how the NFL values LTs way more than WR.
Go look at the LT average salary in this league.
https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/positional/
The Texans are getting ready to make Tunsil the highest paid LT in the NFL. This is absolutely one of the hardest positions to fill in the NFL.
On Clowney, it's pretty obvious the Texans and now Seattle have issues of value based on his asking price. The Texans actually got 2 decent roster players and a 3rd for him. The Texans made a good move there, better than Seattle.
The Texans are simply structuring their contracts around the players that fit their go forward philosophy and that is a proven philosophy used by multiple teams. Watson will soon be a top 2 salary at his position and Tunsil the LT will be top at his. D line is already expensive with Watt.
Not saying Hopkins isn't good. Just don't think he is worth 20 million per year on the Texans and he will probably get that from the Cards or they will have the problem to deal with.
In closing, I hope the Cooks trade makes O’Brien look like a genius because I’d love to see Cooks get healthy and get back to his potential. I have some reservations about the Cardinals end of the Hopkins trade simply because of how much they invested at WR in last year’s draft and I think Keim is a bit of an idiot as far as NFL GMs go, but in pure value, I still think it looks good for Arizona.
But then you look a little further and you see that right tackles make 4.5 million, and tackles overall make 3.5. That doesn't make sense- if all left tackles make 9.5, and all right tackles make 4.5, how can the average for the entire position be 3.5?
Here's the answer- while there are over 150 tackles in the league, only 29 of them are designated as "Left Tackles" and those guys are mostly their teams' best tackle. Backups aren't labeled as left OR right tackles, they're just "tackles". It creates an asymmetric comparison, one that looks at 29 of the best tackles vs. every WR in the league (nearly 300 of them) many of whom are listed as WR but in practice are special teamers. If you looked at that sheet, you would also think the NFL valued free safeties over cornerbacks (they don't.)
As others have noticed, the top WRs clearly make more than the top tackles. The WR franchise tag figure is second only to quarterbacks. I think there's a pretty safe argument that LTs and WRs are valued pretty equally, but trying to definitively say that the NFL values LTs more ignores the best evidence.
