I know this may tick off some people but I need to get out a little frustration. When I tried to warn at season's end that the Cards had major cap problems with 22 free agents several people wanted to quote all the money Over The Cap showed the Cards had to spend. It was always too little with that many free agents. In today's NFL unless someone does a Tom Brady and takes a major income hit or deferment you just can't keep a large number of high quality players. This is why drafting effectively is critical. This is why Belicheck won't normally give big contracts to star older players. It's okay to give big money to Fitz & Palmer but it means you're going to sacrifice other primary players. Thankfully Keim has had some success at filling holes with relatively cheap players. However when he misses like CB last year, the penalty is no playoffs. The margin for error is typically slim. Despite all the theories for how to spend and structure contracts there was always too many people and too little available money. Now that we've all had our reality check it's time to get down to the real business of where the Cards go from here. It's too late to start the modified rebuild I sought, so the Cards need to make several smart moves going forward.
you see this over and over in the NFL--
good teams, who by definition have good players, after a while cant afford to keep every single good player. I dont think any amount of savvy cap management can eliminate letting good players go at some point.
Campbell is a classic example of a player good teams let leave --- as much as it hurts.
Jefferson is simply good/bad luck. Nobody here -- absolutely nobody -- at this time last year predicted that Tony Jefferson would get something like $8mm per year in free agency. So good luck in that the Cards got an unexpected boost from a player -- bad in that it happened in a contract year with loads of cap room. The fact that money was allocated to Peterson and Badger didnt help either. The Cards are really banking on Badger returning to form.
Good drafting is what puts a team into this situtation -- good drafting will solve it as well.