FanPost

Cardinals Strategy?

After fretting and fuming about what the Cardinals could have done better in the last few days and opportunities lost. I am wondering if part of their strategy is:

- to be patient and wait for teams very active in the FA signings and trades to settle and release their players to meet the cap space requirements. Then find nuggets in those and sign them when they are not competing with a larger group and thus get better value

- sign stop gap players in positions they see developing rookies

- using free cap space to structure contracts to leave more cap space in the future: after they have covered their immediate player needs for this year, if there is cap space available, use that to pay that money as signing bonus to the round 1 and round 2 draft picks so they can free as much cap space from future years (if that is allowed). Perhaps that’s why they have held off on signing those rookies. Example: if they still have $8M available, give Patrick Peterson a signing bonus of $6M and Ryan Williams $2M. Thus freeing about $6M cap space in the future.

Thus have a decent team this year that can compete in the NFC West, but have more money to sign stronger FA in the future at the same time when more of our rookies have developed. Thus have a much stronger overall team to complete further into the playoffs and for the SB in the coming years.

<em>This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of Revenge of the Birds' (ROTB) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of ROTB's editors.</em>