Rams w/o Foles
top = 12 for 57.0% => 4.8%
mid = 18 for 28.7% => 1.6%
bot = 23 for 10.3% => 0.4%
cap = 4.0%

I will be adding this to the model salary cap thread later.

The Blueprint to Building a Successful NFL Franchise in the Salary Cap Era

The Blueprint to Building a Successful NFL Franchise in the Salary Cap Era
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer Oct 25, 2013

Building a winning NFL team isn’t like any other construction project.

NFL executives have a budget, a crew, equipment and raw materials—but the wrecking balls start swinging the instant they’re done; all they can do is hope more of their building survives 17 weeks of destruction than any of the other 31 buildings on the same block.

A year after they started, they salvage what they can from the wreckage and start all over again.

In today’s NFL, the salary cap is stubbornly flat, making budgets tight around the league. There’s only so much cap money to go around, and the average annual value of big-money contracts seems to go up with each new contract extension.

NFL executives can’t just try to get good players at every spot on the roster; market prices and the salary cap force them to approach roster-building with a clear philosophy. Which positions will be strengths? Which positions will have depth? If any positions have strength and depth, where will they skimp?

Surveying today’s NFL landscape, is there an ideal roster-building philosophy? Go big on a quarterback? Build a smothering defense? Hoard dominant playmakers?

Is there a way to invest your team’s resources that will give you an advantage over everyone else?

Offense vs. Defense vs. Both

The first question to answer is whether it’s best to invest more heavily in offense, defense or strive to be balanced.

Obviously, if we’re waving magic wands, it’s best to have a great offense and a great defense, but we’re not waving magic wands—we’re writing checks. Let’s take a look at the 2012 playoff teams and see how they built their mousetraps.

The surest sign of strength in the NFL is points differential: The total points a team’s offense has scored, minus the total points its defense has allowed. In 2012, 11 of the 12 playoff teams were among the top 13 teams in points differential.

Only the No. 6 Chicago Bears and No. 9 New York Giants finished in the top 13 in points differential and missed out on the playoffs; only the No. 21 Indianapolis Colts were outside of the top 13 and made the postseason.

Organized from left to right, we see the Patriots with the NFL’s highest-scoring offense and No. 9 scoring defense. Not surprisingly, they had the NFL’s best scoring differential. Second best in scoring differential were the Denver Broncos, who had the No. 2 offense and No. 4 defense.

Then the pendulum swings back toward defense, with the Seahawks, 49ers and Falcons finishing third through fifth in scoring differential. Those three teams all had top-five scoring defenses, but they finished ninth, 11th and seventh in scoring offense, respectively.

The Washington Redskins were an interesting case. They finished with the No. 4 scoring offense at 27.2 points per game, but 22nd in scoring defense, allowing 24.2 points per game. The 49ers had the highest disparity the other way, with the No. 2 defense and No. 11 offense.

Outside of the Redskins defense and both units from the Minnesota Vikings and Indianapolis Colts, every playoff team’s offense and defense finished in the top 12 of the league. Here’s the table feeding that chart.

Pro Football Reference

Unfortunately for NFL executives, it looks like the answer is “both.” Even teams with exceptional offenses or defenses are at a big disadvantage if the other unit isn’t at least above average.

How Do You Get Both?

There’s only $123 million in cap money to spend. If you want a top-10 quarterback, that’s going to eat up $15 to $20 million right off the top, per Spotrac.com.

Leaving $103 million for the rest of the pot sounds like plenty, but signing one player to a $20 million contract drops the average salary available per roster spot from $2.32 million to $1.98 million. That’s a $340,000 gap across 52 roster spots in a league where the minimum rookie salary is $405,000.

Many fans love the idea of forgoing the big quarterback and spending that money bolstering the running game and defense. When the 2000 Baltimore Ravens won a Super Bowl with unheralded quarterback Trent Dilfer at the helm, they proved this model could work.

The problem: In order to pull that off, the Ravens didn’t only need one of the best scoring defenses of all time, allowing just 10.3 points per game, they also needed a top-five running game to muster a scoring offense that ranked 14th in the NFL.

In order to make up for the drag a replacement-level quarterback puts on a team, the rest of the team has to be truly exceptional.

The quarterback market is extremely efficient. As this chart shows, only Joe Flacco’s monster deal (born of a negotiation where he had unprecedented leverage) and Tom Brady’s intentional discount vary from a tight correlation between performance and pay.

There’s a reason teams are spending so much on top quarterbacks; they do wonders for the rest of the team. Avoiding interceptions is the biggest part of maximizing a team’s turnover margin, and turnover margin is a huge driver of success, on both sides of the ball. Offenses that avoid turning it over turn more drives into points, and defenses that take the ball away stop other teams from scoring.

Just look at the correlation between points differential and turnover differential.

For those of you who aren’t stats geeks, that R-squared value is what’s called the “coefficient of determination,” and it goes from zero (a quarterback’s thrown interceptions have no effect on point differential) to one (thrown interceptions are the sole factor in determining point differential).

An R-squared of 0.4683 is a very, very strong correlation, and it’s about twice as strong as the still-significant R-squared of defensive interceptions to point differential (0.2354).

Fumbles are part of turnovers too, but it’s well established that fumble recovery rates are all but completely random, and forced fumbles not much less so. Football Outsiders even publishes an annual summary of fumble luck and highlights extremely unlucky and lucky teams due for a regression to the mean.

Investing money in defense hoping to snag more turnovers won’t bear as much win-loss fruit as investing money in a quarterback who’ll make plays without turning the ball over much.

Protecting Your Investment?

Let’s say you have your franchise quarterback. (In which case, congratulations! He’ll make you look smart for as long as your checks clear.) Is it better to maximize his performance by protecting him with quality pass-blocking or surrounding him with weapons?

It’s awfully hard to isolate quality quarterback play from quality receiver play. It’s also hard to isolate quality quarterback play from quality offensive line play. Pro Football Focus team offense stats (subscription required) can get us close, though.

Let’s regress 2012’s team-adjusted net yards per attempt (a great one-number passing effectiveness stat that incorporates touchdowns, sacks and interceptions) against Pro Football Focus team “Pass” grades (incorporating the play of the quarterback and all pass-catchers).

As with the correlation between thrown interceptions and point differential, we see a huge coefficient of determination: 0.4775. If you have good quarterback play and receivers who get open and make plays, you will move the ball effectively, with more touchdowns and fewer interceptions.

Not exactly rocket science, but it confirms that PFF’s subjective grading system correlates strongly with statistical reality.

Now let’s look at the same adjusted net yards per attempt, this time regressed against PFF’s team pass-block grades.

Again, we have a significant coefficient of determination (0.197), but not nearly as huge as the connection between passing game production and quality quarterback/receiver play.

This makes intuitive sense.

The Carolina Panthers have the fourth-best PFF team pass-block grade (subscription required) so far in 2013, but they aren’t getting great receiver play, and quarterback Cam Newton got off to a slow start. The Detroit Lions are getting surprisingly solid play from their patchwork offensive line—but have invested huge money and draft picks getting Stafford weapons.

So far this season, though, Newton’s adjusted net yards per attempt is 6.25, ranked 15th in the NFL; Stafford’s is 7.30, ranked seventh.

Moneyball

Of course, the best way to maximize your cap dollars is to get talent at less cost than it’s worth.

Detroit Lions guard Larry Warford keeps quarterback Matthew Stafford clean.

The Lions rolled with depth veterans and rookie Larry Warford at three of the five offensive line spots. Per PFF, they’re getting better pass-blocking (subscription required) than teams like the St. Louis Rams and Chicago Bears, who spent big free-agent money on veteran linemen.

The word “Moneyball” has jumped the shark, according to The Washington Post’s Lydia DePillis.

She may have a point when it comes to folks slapping the word “Moneyball” for any kind of statistical optimization. Its original use still holds water, though: Sports teams can beat their competition by getting worthwhile production from players they didn’t pay free-market price for.

As the Washington Redskins found out between the time owner Dan Snyder bought the team and current general manager Bruce Allen took over, there isn’t a direct correlation between money spent and on-field production.

Follow the Blueprint

The Chiefs are the toast of the town, a worst-to-first revival that’s as unexpected as it is spectacular. How did they do it?

Head coach Andy Reid inherited a stout running game and relentless pass defense, gave up a whole lot (likely two second-round picks) to get a quarterback whose best quality is that he doesn’t throw interceptions, and added veteran pass-catchers like receiver Donnie Avery and tight end Anthony Fasano.

Avery and Fasano haven’t panned out like Reid may have hoped. By refusing to fork over huge money to extend veteran left tackle Branden Albert, though, and drafting rookie Eric Fisher to eventually replace him on the cheap, Reid and the Chiefs are following our statistical blueprint to a “T.”
This refers to their conclusion that it is better to invest in good WRs than the offensive line. You get better YPA. That might not be the best metric, but it does emphasize a point.
It’s hard to argue with the results.

http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/los-angeles-rams/yearly/cap/

Really nice clear look at the Rams future FAs, RFAs, and ERFAs up to year 2020.

That would be big if Tavon could be effective as a pure WR, possibly a #1 WR.

All NFL players should be making at least $1 million per year

All NFL players should be making at least $1 million per year
Posted by Mike Florio and Neil Schwartz on March 29, 2016, 10:11 PM EDT

[Editor’s note: Agent Neil Schwartz recently approached me with an idea to make veteran players more attractive to teams and, more importantly, to ensure that all NFL players make a very comfortable living. The end result is a column on which Schwartz and I collaborated. Any typos are his fault.]

As the NFL and its players learn more about the realities of playing pro football, it’s more important than ever that all players receive fair compensation for the risks they assume. And by all players, that means every player. Which means that each player should have a minimum salary that reflects the maximum toll the game can take on the human body.

Currently, the league ties minimum salary to experience. For new players, it’s $450,000. For players with 10 or more years of experience, the minimum rises to $985,000. This disparity makes younger players more attractive than older ones, even with the “minimum salary benefit,” a device that provides teams with a salary-cap break on older players with minimum-salary deals, but not a cash break.

When it comes to the 29 positions on the 53-man roster that don’t go to offensive and defensive starters, cheaper is usually better. And younger is always cheaper.

Note* IR is sort of a hidden cost. You need ~7 more minimum wage players to replace players that go on IR. Let’s say 29 + 7 = 36 players on a roster of 53, which is really ~60 players that you have to account for. imo

The gap between young/cheap and old/costly gets partially bridged under the existing labor deal through the performance-based pool, which gives the lowest-paid players more money based on how much they play. Still, that money comes from the league at large; at the team level, going young on the back half of the roster means saving money. Which gives the teams even more leverage when squeezing veteran players to take less.

So why not guarantee every NFL player who is on an active roster more? The floor should be the same for all players, and the best place to start is the number that still exudes “rich.” One million dollars.

Yes, the minimum salary for all players should be the same, regardless of experience. And it should be $1 million dollars for now, with increases based upon the annual increases in the salary cap.

The adjustment will cost the owners nothing, since they’re already operating in a salary-capped environment. It will, as a practical matter, pick the pockets of some the NFL’s richest players, but maybe the league needs a dash of Robin Hood in order to ensure that all players are able to exit the sport with enough money to have made it worth their while.

As a practical matter, non-superstars who currently are making a significant amount of money would likely lose the most. But that group isn’t nearly big enough to dictate policy for the union at large. As a matter of basic fairness, those players still have every right to negotiate competitively the best possible deal within the confines of the salary cap — a dynamic that all players currently face.

Increasing the minimum salary regardless of experience will create an incentive both for teams to keep older players and for older players to keep playing. It also will make the sport even more attractive for the vast majority who currently won’t get truly rich but could die prematurely for the trying.

That latter angle could be the most important one. At a time when a smattering of veterans are walking away from the game due to concussion concerns, no rookies currently are opting out of the chance to get drafted. At some point, that could change. Putting more money on the table sooner than later could keep that from happening.

Although the current labor agreement has five years remaining on it, side deals can be reached at any time. This is a potential side deal that will help both sides significantly, a true win-win for management and labor that in turn can be a big win for most players.

In 2020, the Salary Cap is projected to be 200M. If the Franchise Tag holds steady at 12.8%, it would be $25.6M in 2020.

If we use Luck’s number of 13.2%, we get $26.4M