They have until July to increase their offer. Not offering the guy the moon right out of the gate doesn't equal 'we don't sold on you'. If they weren't sold on him, they'd have traded him and gotten good value.
Something I've been thinking about (not directed at you or anyone else here, just a general observation) - we finally start operating like the Patriots, try not to overpay for talent, let aging stars go before they are done, and Redskins fans just freak the **** out. That's just the truth.
If you act like the Patriots, but have neither Belichick nor Brady, things aren't going to work well for you. The Pats LUCKED into Brady. Similarly, we lucked into Cousins. I am NOT saying Cousins = Brady or anything like that, but the Pats paid Brady a lot of money and discovered that when you have a really good QB, the rest of the team just doesn't matter as much. When you have one of the two best QBs in the league over the last 17 years, you can get away with garbage at WR, trade your starting Guards for low round draft picks and just generally afford to send players packing a year or two earlier than most clubs do, and people will talk about the Pats system, how genius Belichick is, and how just generally ruminate on why other NFL clubs hang on to their veteran players a smidge too long.
If we completely bought in to the Patriots way, we would suck. Period. We should have gotten rid of Fletcher a year or two before we allowed him to retire gracefully. We should have cut Portis earlier. Cooley was ineffective late in his career. The list goes on. We kept them all to 1)keep the fans happy, 2) to provide a semblence of winning culture, and/or 3) to maintain the illusion that we were trying to win every year. None of those things are what the Pats would have done.
Because they can afford to. Their margin of error is much larger than almost anyone else's out there. Our margin of error has been absurdely small. Assuming Kirk doesn't get traded, we are about to find out if he can elevate a team the way Rogers, Brady, Manning, etc can or if he is a system QB.
Either way, whatever the results, we can't afford to do things the Patriots way.
Yet.
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