at reasonable cost. If I am the owner of a business I am not going to subsidize mediocre performance with top echelon pay.
It's a mediocre unit as constituted.
I didn't say Orakpo can't play, just that there are no consensus all pros here, so overpaying anyone to keep them would be a mistake.
Orakpo is the only one under consideration for "top echelon pay," and that's only a maybe. We don't' know what he's going to get on the open market yet.
You don't like Rak, that's fine. You're not alone, there are a lot of people who think he's not worth top-5 or even top-10 money. But here's the thing...if we don't pay Rak what he's worth, we're going to get sub-par talent for cheaper. So if you think Rak is mediocre, what do you think less money is going to get? A bird in hand is worth two in the bush...do you think we should waste a valuable draft pick on a position we already have in hand? We all know the uncertainty the draft brings. Not to mention, People LOVE to hate on Jim Haslett around here, with good cause. How bad will he be if you start taking AWAY what talent he DOES have?
But right now, we have a ton of cap space (+$7M more, according to reports), around $33-36M (not sure if that includes Hall or not). As Henry points out, we currently don't have an upper-echelon contract on the roster, which is part of the reason we're going to have such massive cap room. We don't get a "bonus" if we don't use the cap space, so why not use it? As Henry points out, if we continue to be mediocre for a few years, we're going to be in this same situation with our offensive players in a few years.
So, to recap:
We can tell Rak to piss off, and let someone else "overpay" him (I don't think we'd be overpaying him, but I may be in the minority). In this scenario, we have to find a replacement either in the draft, or in free agency. Here is the top-10 (according to Rotoworld) OLB free agents:
1. Brian Orakpo
2. Jason Worilds
3. Shaun Phillips
4. Mike Neal
5. O'Brien Schofield
6. Rob Jackson
7. Erin Henderson
8. Jo-Lonn Dunbar
9. Keith Rivers
10. Jonathan Casillas
That there is some slim pickins. Two of the top 10 are our free-agents! Rob Jackson is number 6!! Yikes! So, that leaves the draft. This is a very deep draft, according to some...but that's always a crap shoot. We might be able to find first round talent as late as the third round, but probably not at a premium position like OLB. So, you get someone who isn't quite ready, and one of the top-10 fills in while he is schooled.
Or, we can re-sign Rak and Jackson, draft another OLB for depth, and use our top-draft picks on REAL positions of need, like OL, OL, or possibly OL. Maybe a WR or MLB, if superlative talent falls to us at 34th overall.
With no 1st-round pick, our options are very limited. Re-signing Rak is really the only option.
 }})
