2023 Washington Roster Moves

[Boone]

Leno's wife on Twitter doesn't make him an NFL starter. He's not. Sorry.

I gotta be honest. I'm not sure Sam Cosmi is an NFL starter.

 

[SkinsOrlando]

But are their signings an upgrade? If yes, great debate the cost, if no, we ain't found shit combing free agency.

 

[romberjo]

Here's a link to the Allen vs. Payne career stats that was posted earlier. Something that doesn't come up in these stats (but does if you look at them individually) is that Payne has 14 batted passes versus 4 for Allen (in slightly fewer games). Payne is really good at batting passes--not quite as useful as a sack, but I think a really underappreciated stat b/c it's a pretty much-guaranteed loss of down (often on 3d down), and reasonably frequently ressults in an interception. He's not as good as Allen, but he's pretty close. And as others have said, while his sacks this year were anomalous, his play has been pretty steady, always good. (And maybe going from two-gap to one-gap this past year helped and has predictive power for the future.)

That said, I was hoping for a trade to Chicago, who has plenty of draft picks and cap space and a need for a DT. (And we could presumably have plugged in Mathis and not lost that much.)

But this past year showed that we can have excellent DT play, and Sweat plus just a guy at DE, and excel. Gives us flexibility to trade Young or Sweat.

 

[Chris]

Payne is also only 25. Will turn 26 at the end of May.

 

[Boone]

Bottom line is we avoided the worst outcome … renting a good not great player for a year for a shit-ton of money and then seeing him walk. He’s not a perfect player but we are definitely a better D with him than without him…

 

[Chris]

 

[Boone]

Kudos to DP. I really thought all that was going to matter for him was going to the highest bidder. Happy to have been wrong.

 

[Neophyte]

I hate to sound like a curmudgeon but it is very possible we were the highest bidder. His agent would have had an excellent idea of the money he could get.

Consider that Hargraves got less than Payne and he was considered the best of this year's FA DT class.

 

[Boone]

He signed immediately. If he were looking for the highest bidder, he and his agent likely wait, maybe float the Commanders offer and see if they can get a bidding war going…

 

[Boone]

 

[Kel Varnsen]

I guess the Falcons message boards will have a new member today, ChrisChandlerforHOF.

In all seriousness, good luck to Henicke. The guy has the heart of a warrior. He’s easy to root for in short spurts. Eventually the limitations overshadow the effort and that’s when we all get frustrated. But I hope for his sake he does well in Atlanta.

 

[Neophyte]

If true, I'm sorry to see this. Especially if we end up signing Mariotta, as has been rumored.

It would be a net loss for Washington and a net gain for Atlanta.

 

[Boone]

Maybe they grab Minshew - which I think would be a net gain. Only issue I have with Mariota is his challenges staying healthy. I think he and Heinicke are fairly equivalent in terms of talent…

Wonder if we even made TH an offer? I think once Scott Turner got canned, he probably had a lot less value.

 

[burgold]

I think Heinicke gave all he could for us and deserves our praise. He almost pulled off an incredible Cinderella story. Very easy to root for and very easy to like, ultimately he's a low end starter and a high end back up. Then again, who knows. Scott Turner never really built a playbook around what he could do. He wouldn't even let Heinicke roll out. So, maybe even with his arm limitations he's better than we saw.

Still, his chief advantage was that he knew Scott Turner's system inside and out and Scott is no longer here. I wish him well and thank him for what he did. I still think he overproduced expectations. He wasn't good enough but he was better than he had any right to be.

 

[Boone]

Just one thought before we find out what QB they are adding. I’m not sure how smart it is to make your priority adding a QB who ‘will compete with Sam Howell’ but presumably Howell will be expected to beat out for the starting role?

In fact, I think that’s a horrible way to frame it. Until you have a proven franchise QB starter, you should always have your goal adding a guy who can start and win - the best QB available. The goal isn’t to make sure Howell feels secure and wins the starting job. It’s to give yourself the best chance of winning.

Watching all of the quality free agent QBs get snatched up while we sit and watch - it’s concerning.

 

[SilentThreat]

 

[Neophyte]

If true, nice payday for Heinicke. And more than I would have been willing to pay him to stay in Washington by a factor of 2.

Of course, the details are important and it's the words "worth up to" that are the details here. Probably significant incentives and bonuses for playing time that he might never see if Ridder stays healthy.

 

[Henry]

I would have loved to keep Heine here as a backup but I'm not surprised he's moving on. He did a great job here and I wish him nothing but the best.

 

[SilentThreat]

We were paying him $1.5m last year. This is a huge pay raise for essentially a lateral move. Good for Taylor, but I don’t want to pay him that with the current situation…. Just my opinion

 

[Canadian Hog]

The writing was on the wall when Heinicke basically deferred and said that Howell should be the one to start vs. Dallas. To take it one step further, I think one foot was already out the door the moment Wentz started vs. Cleveland. Good luck to Taylor. Kind of cool that he gets to go play for the team his boyhood idol started his career with.