Summerhill

Many of the times when there are players who are popular in draftnik circles like Settle and Phillips and then are picked much lower by teams in the draft, the NFL teams usually know what they are doing.

Mack is in the last year of his contract. It is considered protocol in the NFL that if the team a player is on wants to keep him, you re-sign him going into the last year of his contract. Mack was drafted in 2014. Players that were drafted right around him that have alrady received new contracts from their original teams include Blake Bortles, Jake Mathews, Mike Evans, and Taylor Lewan. Julio had 3 years left on his contract.

It's been so long I can't believe it has come up again, but Matt Ryan's 19 INTs his senior year in college is a result of the massive amount of passes he threw that year (654). His INT ratio was fine (1 per every 34 pass attempts).

I've been watching the NFL for a long time while having a specific interest in team building and management and I don't think I've ever seen a good team be able to keep all its players to the extent the Falcons have. I know some things are probably going to change next year but it is still remarkable how they have done this.

There are 32 teams in the NFL and there just aren't that many players of the size you are speaking of with the athleticism to actually be good. Most teams, especially 4-3 teams, don't have a player like you're thinking. They have big and squatty but not enormous players like Senat who are hard to move.

It’s considered the norm for any team to re-sign a player it wants to keep during the offseason before the final year of his contract.

Barr was an excellent pass rusher in college but that has not been his role in the NFL. We don't know if he can do it. He's never had more than 4 sacks in a season. Say what you will about Beasley, but he has shown he can be an excellent pass rusher in the NFL, even if it was for just one season.

I would add it could easily be the last seasons for Sanu and Alford, too.

Poole is the type of player good teams find as undrafted free agents, squeeze a shot much out as possible without having to pay them much, and then let a bad team overpay him in free agency and hopefully get a compensatory pick out of it.

Wow. With all the other players needing new contracts, too, and Allen's running mate likely looking at a monster extension down the line, I thought for sure Rico would be the odd man out. That said, this goes to show you the difference in perception among mid round picks and top picks. As a former mid round pick, Allen is happy as heck to be making $6+ million per year. If he was a 1st rounder who had the exact same career on the field, he'd be expecting and probably get a lot more. The same thing happened with Ryan Schraeder.

Historically it’s easier to find good RBs in the middle rounds and save your 1st round picks for other positions you can’t find later. That’s what the good teams do, like the Falcons.

I've never said that rushing isn't important. But in a league where you have finite draft picks and salary cap to spend on your entire roster, in order to be really good you have to be good at rushing without spending too much on it, because it detracts from your ability to build the rest of your team. The best teams get good production rushing the ball without spending too much on running backs.

The Patriots are the only team that really understands player value.

I think in an ideal world he deserves around $12 million per year. The whole reason we just had to float extra money to Julio Jones is because other teams were giving too much elite money to receivers who aren't as good as Jones and he got his feelings hurt. Falcons just did the opposite with Mathews.

You're talking out of both sides of your mouth. Sure, at times the Pro Bowl is a popularity contest, such as the Abraham season you mention. But in the context of Jake Mathews, it is perfectly clear to everyone that players like Tyron Smith, Trent Williams, and Jason Peters are superior and are rightly rewarded for it.