The Baltimore Ravens lost C.J. Mosley to the New York Jets. Here are three things to think about in the aftermath of that:
1. There is no way the Ravens should have given that kind of a pay day to Mosley:
The Baltimore Ravens were wise not to waste their resources in the Mosley sweepstakes. The Ravens had one of the most coveted linebackers on the open market and he went to a team with an ungodly amount of cap space to spend. The Ravens, who entered free agency with a less than $30 million in cap space couldn’t have competed with Mosley’s $85 million deal. The Jets overpaid Mosley, and there’s no way to get around that. Mosley isn’t the best linebacker in football, but his contract says otherwise.
Some of the same fans who have complained about bad contracts for players such as Joe Flacco and Jimmy Smith are the ones saying it would have been a good choice to franchise tag Mosley. Mosley ended up getting more than $15 million per season with the Jets and that’s the basis for this line of thinking. The problem is that franchise tagging Mosley would have put a huge cap restraint on this year and would have created the same exact problem next year. Matt Judon is a free agent next year so that makes delaying a deal with Mosley even less of a good idea. The franchise tag was too steep of a price for Mosley, especially because it would not have solved a problem.
The Ravens got priced out of Mosley’s services. When Kwon Alexander (a good, not great linebacker) got a big deal from the San Francisco 49ers, Mosley’s deal with the Jets became an inevitability. The market for an inside linebacker was set by teams with a ton of cap space who overvalued what they got off the free agent market. Mosley’s price tag wasn’t in DeCosta’s control. Blaming the Ravens for letting Mosley go is a pointless complaint. The Ravens have had Mosley since 2014. If they thought he was a generational talent that they couldn’t have lost to the Jets, it would be a different story. He’s a good player that is replaceable and the Ravens know that.