He would be well worth it (after signing Welker, of course). He's an instantaneous upgrade over anything else we have available in the defensive backfield. And, at his age, I don't see him costing as much as some people on here believe.
K, we are going to have to pay Talib 8-10/, Volmer 8-10/, Welker 8-10/ plus Woody, Thomas, Arrington, Coles and the rest....and now you want to pay ANOTHER 6-8MM for Reed? How soon before we become the Jets north
Here's the thing - The Jets have just 7 players who take up $80MM of cap space. Leaving $40MM for the other 46 players to divvy up. (IIRC those 7 are Sanchez, Revis, Cromartie, D'Brick, Mangold, Harris, and Holmes)....and that's assuming the lJets unload the contracts of Scott, Pace, Keller, Pouha, Greene, etc, some of whom will have dead money consequences, and all of whom will have to be replaced with vet minimum players. That's 13% of your roster taking 67% of your cap space, and all the extension and restructure flexibility has already been used)
Conversely the Pats would have 17 players before they get to that $80MM figure, and that figure would grow to over 20 after the Brady extension.
But you can see the problem the Pats are facing, and why it is likely that people will inevitably get mad when all the FA's aren't signed. Its almost impossible to sign them all.
As it is look at the reality. The Pats do as good a job as anyone in the league at spreading the wealth. But even THEY end up giving 67% of the wealth to only 32% of the roster. A lot better than the Jets, but that's still top heavy. And its only going to get worse going forward.
I guess you can make the "cap look like crap" for a couple of years, but eventually all the manipulation comes back to bite you in the ass. The Jets have been feeling the effects of their "all in" play for the last 2 years already, being very limited in their FA moves. Its only going to be worse this year, where it's unlikely they will be able to resign their top FA (Landry) to even a $5-6MM/deal Let alone facing the prospect of having to do THREE $8-10MM deals like the Pats are looking at. At least there is a possibility for us to manage this task. But only because we haven't signed "everyone" in the past.
Like the pebble in the pond, every signing has a ripple effect for good or bad. Teams are facing a finite budget every year, and no signing occurs in a vacuum.....though a lot of fans think they do....or at least they post like they do.