Obviously we have to remember that we don't know what the Cards overall FA plan is. We have some space and can make some moves. We need to see what we spent overall on Bethea and Dawson, but we might have led the league in quality low price signings, especially on day 1.
The Day 1 grade format forces snap judgments and omits the possibility of seeing the overall free agency picture. Obviously we all want grades and instant analysis, and we are thankful for them Mitch.
Personally given the constraints we were in... decent capspace, but guys other teams wanted badly and overpaid for, I think we did very well. I'd give us a C+. Maybe even higher, up to a B. I'll settle at B-.
Of course the day itself given our losses is worse, but given our constraints we fared well. Dansby, Bethea, and Dawson are nothing to sneeze at. That's some quality talent coming in on the day we lost some quality talent. True we gave up long term for short term and that's the biggest loss, but it's probably a wash overall for this year, maybe even a plus for the Cardinals.
We have to remember that special teams cost us (or was the deciding factor in) 4-5 wins and caused a tie. Give us a few of those wins and we're in the playoffs last year. Dawson removes us from the kicker in those debacles. It might not be entirely fair to Cat, but I think Arians felt Cat wasn't mentally tough enough, and this removes him from the equation. If we can make sure our long snapper can snap, our holder can hold, and our kicker can kick... that improvement might be the biggest one we can make compared to last year. Other areas of special teams contributed to the debacle, but the actual process of kicking xp's and field goals was the major component of our special teams disaster.
Dansby, if he even plays like last year is a significant upgrade. We have to remember he plays big in big moments, and for whatever reason he plays the best in our defense.
Bethea is a physical force, and he's going to bring it. We want his toughness on the team. He'll continue to make offensive players pay for their catches/runs.
We have the capspace to be flexible to make choices going forward. I think it's clear we made the choice that we thought we could use the capspace more wisely on other players then sinking them into large contracts for some combination of Jefferson, CC, and DJ. Let's not forget that none of those three originally came to us as 1st round picks. CC was a 2nd rounder, DJ was a cut second rounder we picked up as a FA, and Jefferson was a UDFA.
There's still quality that can help this team remaining and we have the capspace to get some. We have a deep DL. I am concerned about Nkemdiche, but imo we're absolutely fine at DL, especially if we draft or sign another guy there.
Secondary is more of a concern now, but I don't believe we've taken that far of a step back, with plenty of time and cap space to make moves. Of course we could lose Cooper as well, but this draft is loaded with CB/S, who ironically seemed to be a good deal faster as a group than the WR's. If we were going to create holes, this was the area of the team to allow holes to be created.
Overall on a day where we lost some significant talent, I'm simply glad we added some good talent likely without compromising our ability to add a decent amount more in free agency. In the end we might end up with 6-7 guys filling holes for the pricetag of losing CC, TJ, and DJ. Not ideal, but pretty good given our position.
