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Listen, I don't have any grand, soapboxy tirade today. As much as I think my team could use an All-Pro cornerback, I have endured years of invasive psychotherapy to rid myself of that oh-so-Redskins-fan thing we always used to do. You know what I am talking about.
Step 1: All-Pro cornerback hits free agent market
Step 2: Redskins fans think, "This is a player we must have, at any cost."
Step 3: Dan Snyder thinks the same thing.
Step 4: After committing somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 million in guaranteed salary, it turns out the player has torn the only tendon in his entire body that can't be fixed. The tendon is called something terrible, like the "Diablo Tendon."
Step 5: When we watch the team on Sundays, it is the equivalent of watching someone set fire to a pile of money.
Sooooooooooooo, I am going to use all the methods from my therapy sessions to get through this period of my life, and you should too. I am not even going to tell you how much salary cap space we have left (hint: it's not $14 million, which was the franchise tag amount, and where the bidding STARTS). That doesn't matter anyway, as NFL teams can make salary cap space appear as if from nowhere.
The fact is that Josh Norman is a player that would make just about every team better. After the Super Bowl, I did write in this space that if he ever sniffed free agency, he was the ONLY player to which I would support paying a crazy amount of money. That was when we had a few more bucks to spend. At this point, it would take some maneuvering to get there.
Let's be very clear: Josh Norman is going to get PAID. There are teams (like the Jags for instance) that have tens of millions in salary cap space right now. They have to spend it, and there is nobody currently available who deserves that money as much as or more than Josh Norman.
To summarize: I would love to have Josh Norman on my team, but I would not be in favor of deviating from McLovin's plan at this point to break the bank on a free agent. This is going to be a bidding war, and while winning those kinds of things was always our...you know, thing...now is not the time to return to that.
P.S. If Josh Norman comes here, that would be so awesome. (If you want to entertain such nostalgic feelings regarding the way this team used to chase these kinds of players, talk to us in the comments section about how it would work, what our secondary would look like and what kind of money you think we could conjure to get it done.)
P.P.S. Why the hell did Carolina let an All-Pro corner walk out of the building? They were on the hook for $14 million to keep a guy that was instrumental in getting them where they got last season. Whichever team signs him is likely going to pay more. It has to be the Diablo Tendon.