Here's the bottom line. A team needs to stretch the cap a bit WHEN THEY HAVE TALENT ON ROSTER. Its fine to make sure you lock up players who are successful in your system and extend windows. My gripe is thinking you can pay every FA on the market and buy championships. It doesn't work for a variety of reasons. And when you get carried away with it you end up with a cap situation that forces you to jettison valuable talent. 5-6 years from now, aprh and assuming progression rather than regression we will have a lot of talent up for contracts. I have no problem stretching the cap to keep them. An occasional FA signing to fill a hole even makes sense. However the Smith contracts went 50%. Turner ended up costing us for an average player. I forget who the 4th signing was that year which leads me to believe it cost us. Maybe not, I don't recall.

We tried to buy a title and came up short. Then we way overpayed our QB because he was upset. We won't be clear of that issue until after next year, but we really could use a FA safety this year. You can kick the cap, but there are limitations.