2014 NFL off-season thread

Kaepernick will get his bank. His record justifies it, and the fact that if he doesn't the 49ers start over insures it.

 

Kaepernick will get his money because WTH will the 49ers do without him?

If he plays this season out and they do well, which they will, and he leaves, they are QBless with a low pick.

If he stays and goes to the SB again or wins it, he's a 25 mil QB.

Sign him. Give him the money. They are not going to win squat without him.

 

He has one more year, unless his situation is different because he wasn't a first-rounder.

 

If you're going to give a QB $20 million-plus, he better be able to carry your team. I'm talking, Rodgers, Brees, Peyton Manning and Brady. Andrew Luck is probably on the cusp of being included in that group.

The Flacco deal was a game-changer and the result was Stafford, Ryan, Romo and Cutler getting monster deals.

I agree that if Kaepernick wants a new deal now, it should be considerably lower than $18M a year. If he waits until next year, he'll definitely get at least that unless he gets hurt.

I think it makes a lot of sense for the Niners to take their chances and wait.

 

If he plays well this season, they franchise him next season and they owe him roughly $18M. Which means that if they do nothing now, his next two years are going to cost them $19M total. Any contract extension has to factor that in, and when you factor that in, the logic of going to an average of $18M (or now $20M as his agents are talking about) becomes a lot more difficult to digest.

49ers are not the kind to blow their salary cap on a player. They may do it, I guess, but it would be out of character. But if they do keep Harbaugh, he'll find someone to win with. When he took over in 2011, people laughed at the idea that that someone could be Alex Smith.

Again, too -- take away the three games against the awful Packers defense and we really don't know if Kaepernick fits in that upper echelon.

 

Kaepernick was mediocre for most of the season. Giving him huge money scares the crap out of me. If he shows improvement in 2014, I'd be all in favor of locking him up with a deal averaging $18M or more a year.

My biggest worry would be the Niners with Kaepernick and without Harbaugh.

 

Or Kaepernick without his legs. A lot of his production was his running ability
which is a double edged sword. His passing production was not
much better than Mark Sanchez in his first 3 years and we know how his contract
extension worked out.

 

A quick glance at profootballreference.com reveals that critics of Kaepernick's 2013 season don't seem to have the facts on their side. He had a 21-8 TD pass-interception ratio and was in the top 10 in several categories including the very important yards per pass attempt and comeback wins. Also had four game-winning drives in the 12 49er wins.

 

Take out but two games -- the aforementioned Packers (he has a hex on them, probably a home-state thing) and the Redskins in full bickering meltdown -- and the TD-INT is 15-8. He also had five games throwing for 150 yards or less, and three games where the 49ers scored single digits in points.

And he committed three turnovers in the fourth quarter of an NFC championship game his team was leading.

If he wants an average of $15M a year, I'm sure the 49ers would go for it. To pay him as one of the top quarterbacks in the game is premature at the very least.

 

I have been alive for 44 years and the Steelers have had two QBs worth a crap in those 44 years. O'Donnell might qualify on his best year as does Stewart, but neither of them is as good as Kaep.

In the last six regular season games for 2013, he had 10 TDs and one pick. Five for the six games, all wins, he had passer ratings of of 100 or better.

I think you are buying low on him right now, as strange as that may sound.

 

Also keep in mind the cap is going to rise dramatically in coming years. PFT notes it today.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/03/07/cap-could-hit-160-million-in-2016/

They say the cap could hit $160M in 2016. Sounds like it will be at least $150M, anyway. That's the time Kaepernick would need a new contract if the 49ers wait. I'd much rather be giving him the huge deal under that cap than under this one. It also dovetails nicely with the franchise's whole timeline; this talent base has about two years to do something before guys age out.

 

Citing the worst games of a quarterback's season and subtracting his best games to evaluate him isn't what I call a valid methodology. You can use that to show Brady and Manning sucked last year. Seattle made Brees and Manning look pretty ill in the playoffs, too, so Kaepernick's got company there -- highly paid company.