Daily Slop – 26 Mar 24: Bullock breaks down film on Commanders new guard, Nick Allegretti

A collection of articles, podcasts & tweets from around the web to keep you in touch with the Commanders, the NFC East and the NFL in general

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What LG Nick Allegretti brings to the Washington Commanders

Breaking down what the Commanders are getting from free agent LG Nick Allegretti

Pass Protection

This is where things could be a little more concerning. Allegretti’s limited snaps make an evaluation of his pass protection tough because he’s only started a handful of games in the last few seasons and in one of those games he played with a torn UCL that basically meant he could only use one arm effectively. But there were a few notes I did have from the games of his I was able to watch. I’ll start with the positives.

This clip shows two plays of Allegretti filling in at center against the Chargers in the Chiefs’ final game of the season, where they rested a number of starters to keep them healthy for the playoffs. On both of these plays, we see some really nice techniques from Allegretti that mess with the balance of the defenders he’s blocking.

Now Allegretti did have some struggles in pass protection. Like most guards, he struggled with quickness at times, especially from Justin Madubuike in that Ravens game.

While Allegretti does sometimes get beat in pass protection, he does have a good trait of being able to lose slowly. What I mean by that is that while he will ultimately lose the block, he does so in a manner that enables him to stay engaged with the defender for as long as possible and give the quarterback as much time as he can to get rid of the ball. The motor and determination we saw earlier plays a large part in this.

The Athletic (paywall)

What Commanders GM Adam Peters said and what we heard at annual league meetings

“We still have a lot of (time), a month till the draft (as of) today,” Peters said Monday at the annual league meetings. “It doesn’t sound like a long time, but you get a lot of information in that month. There are still some of the guys we haven’t seen in person. … We’re far from our answer.”

On if it matters to him how ready a QB is to come in and play

“You weigh that. How ready are they immediately, and how much work do they have to do? And then how can you get them there? And so, with the guys we have in the room right now, I don’t think we have to rush anybody. That’s a great thing whether, with Marcus (Mariota) in there, with Jake (Fromm) in there, we’re not going to have to rush whoever. If we draft a guy, we wouldn’t have to rush him into playing right away. And that’s not how we work anyway. And we’re going to play the person who’s going to give us the best chance to win.”

On whether DT Jonathan Allen is part of Washington’s future plans

“We’ve had some great talks with Jonathan and can’t wait to work with him. He’s awesome. He’s a great, great young man, and he’s a great player, so really excited to work with him. So, we are not interested in trading him.”

What I heard: Let’s put aside the fact that Peters kept the trade door ajar — “not interested” in trading Allen isn’t the same as saying they won’t move him. The real question is whether contract extension talks are happening or will happen. The 2017 first-round pick’s remaining two years do not include any guaranteed money. After a surge over the past two years, Allen’s annual average value of the four-year contract signed, $18 million, is outside the top 10 at his position.

The interior combination of Allen and Daron Payne remains the defensive strength. Quinn is unlikely to break that duo up. Whether the money matter becomes a wedge issue in this election year is something to track in the nation’s capital.

How Washington plans to address its ‘hole’ at LT

“I think you (another reporter) said it’s a hole. I think we have Cornelius (Lucas) there now and Trent Scott, who’s played well, too. So, I don’t know if it’s a hole in our view, but those guys have played and started and have done pretty well. But just like the quarterback question … if we get a chance and we’re in a position to add a really good player there or anywhere, we’ll do that.”

Commanders.com

Commanders sign C Michael Deiter

Deiter (6-6, 315) is a five-year NFL veteran who was drafted by the Miami Dolphins in the third round (78th overall) of the 2019 NFL Draft. He has played in 76 career games, making 35 starts at both left guard and center.

In 2023, Deiter played in 18 games and made 12 consecutive starts at center for the Houston Texans. He was a part of the offensive line that helped quarterback C.J. Stroud earn Offensive Rookie of the Year honors and throw for the third-most passing yards by a rookie quarterback in NFL history.

From 2019-22, Deiter appeared in 57 games and made 23 starts for the Dolphins. In 2019, Deiter started in 15 games which was the most by a Miami offensive lineman since Ja’Waun Jones started in 16 games in 2014.

Deiter played collegiately at Wisconsin where he was a four-year starter and appeared in 54 games while making 24 starts at left guard, 16 at center and 14 at left tackle. His 54 starts became the most in Wisconsin history and second in Big Ten history. During his senior season, he earned first-team All American and first team All-Big Ten. He also earned Big Ten Offensive Lineman of the Year.

Commanders Wire

Commanders have the 11th-most expensive defense in 2024

Peters spent wisely across the board. There were no record-setting deals that reset the market at their respective positions. Instead, Peters and head coach Dan Quinn worked to improve the 2024 roster while remaining flexible in 2025 and beyond.

Per Over the Cap, the Commanders have the 11th-most expensive defense in 2024.

To improve the NFL’s worst defense, Peters signed linebackers Bobby Wagner and Frankie Luvu — both will start. At edge rusher, the Commanders signed Dorance Armstrong, Dante Fowler Jr. and Clelin Ferrell. Armstrong signed a three-year deal, while Fowler and Ferrell agreed to one-year pacts. Washington also re-signed defensive end Efe Obada.

Washington has almost $106 million committed to the defense in 2024. Wagner ($6.5 million), Armstrong ($4.9 million), safety Jeremy Chinn ($3.9 million) and Luvu ($3.9 million) have four of Washington’s top 12 cap hits for 2024.

Payne ($21.6 million) and Allen ($21.4 million) have the second and third-highest cap hits for 2024 behind wide receiver Terry McLaurin.

Commanders.com

Five things to know about Dante Fowler Jr.

4. He delivered a clutch play in the 2018 NFC Championship.

The 2018 season was a special one for the Rams. An 8-0 start helped them win the NFC West with a 13-3 record, earning them a first-round bye in the postseason and a trip to the Super Bowl.

You could argue that the Rams wouldn’t even have gotten to their Super Bowl matchup against the New England Patriots had it not been for Fowler.

The Rams were in a battle with the Saints in the NFC Championship. Drew Brees had the team up by 13 in the first quarter, and while the Rams did fight back to tie the score in the fourth quarter, the momentum favored New Orleans for most of the evening.

Greg Zuerlein’s 48-yard field goal with 15 seconds left sent things to overtime with the score knotted up at 23. The Saints got the ball first, but their chances at advancing vanished four plays later.

On second-and-16 at the Saints’ 34-yard line, Fowler spun past New Orleans’ offensive line and raised his hands up to obscure Brees’ vision, knocking the quarterback to the ground after he released his pass. That altered the throw enough to make it an easy interception for John Johnson III at the Saints’ 46-yard line.

Five plays later, Zuerlein kicked a 57-yard field goal to give the Rams the win.

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Dante Fowler Jr. excited to bring depth to pass rush

Take a look back at Dante Fowler Jr.’s previous stops before coming to Washington. (Photos via The Associated Press)

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Blogging the Boys

Cowboys decade-long track record of under-investing in team suggests that Jones family is not in it to win it

The Cowboys have one of the lowest cash spends of all teams in the league over the last decade.

To understand what’s going on, we have to first establish the difference between cash spend and the salary cap. Cash spend is the money players receive in a given year, the salary cap is merely an accounting tool with which the cash spend is managed. Andrew Brandt, former VP of the Packers, explains:

Cash is what a player will actually receive in a contract. Cap is a mechanism of compliance, a way NFL teams account for a contract over the life of the deal.

And through the NFL’s systematic magic of signing and option bonus proration – spreading out the cap impact of bonuses over the term of the deal – cap can be adjusted to provide short-term gain for long-term pain.

In analyzing a player contract or a team payroll, many fans (and even media) focus on cap impacts. I am here to tell you to stop doing that. What matters is the cash, not the cap. Cash is real money in and real money out. Cap is simply bookkeeping.

The NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) contains two specific requirements in terms of cash spending for NFL teams:

• Combined, the 32 NFL teams must spend 95% of the league salary cap in cash each year.
• Individually, each team had to spend 89% of the league salary cap in cash over two four-year periods (2013-2016, 2017-2020). That was subsequently upped to 90% of the league salary cap over a three-year period (2021-2023).

So how do the Cowboys stack up versus the rest of the league in cash spend?

To understand what’s going on, we have to first establish the difference between cash spend and the salary cap. Cash spend is the money players receive in a given year, the salary cap is merely an accounting tool with which the cash spend is managed. Andrew Brandt, former VP of the Packers, explains:

Cash is what a player will actually receive in a contract. Cap is a mechanism of compliance, a way NFL teams account for a contract over the life of the deal.

And through the NFL’s systematic magic of signing and option bonus proration – spreading out the cap impact of bonuses over the term of the deal – cap can be adjusted to provide short-term gain for long-term pain.

In analyzing a player contract or a team payroll, many fans (and even media) focus on cap impacts. I am here to tell you to stop doing that. What matters is the cash, not the cap. Cash is real money in and real money out. Cap is simply bookkeeping.

The NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) contains two specific requirements in terms of cash spending for NFL teams:

• Combined, the 32 NFL teams must spend 95% of the league salary cap in cash each year.
• Individually, each team had to spend 89% of the league salary cap in cash over two four-year periods (2013-2016, 2017-2020). That was subsequently upped to 90% of the league salary cap over a three-year period (2021-2023).

So how do the Cowboys stack up versus the rest of the league in cash spend?

2013-2016

Let’s start with 2013-2016, for which the NFLPA conveniently aggregated the numbers.

The Cowboys rank just 25th over the four-year period from 2013-2016. The Eagles rank No. 1 over the period with $613.9 million in cash spend, a cool $22 million more per season than the Cowboys.

2016-2019

We don’t have a neat NFLPA tweet this time, and we don’t have the exact 2017-2020 time frame, but we do have a report on the period covering 2016-2019 from Jason La Canfora at CBS Sports. And he identifies the Cowboys as the team that spent the least cash over that period: $634.4 million versus a league average of $703 million.

Even more irritatingly, the Eagles are identified as one of five teams that spent “at least $750M in salary” over the period.

You could argue the same points as for the previous period, but this is beginning to look like a fool-me-once-fool-me-twice type of situation.

2021-2023

I looked hard, but could not find the 2020 data, so we’ll have to do without. Again the NFLPA provides the data for 2021, 2022, 2023.

Over the last three years, the Cowboys rank 30th in cash spending. $84 million behind ultra-stingy Dan Snyder, $93 million behind the league average, $121 million behind the Eagles, and a mind-blowing $223 million behind Cleveland.

Conclusions

Take the Cleveland Browns. How on earth can they spend $757.5 million over three years when the cap over the same period is “just” $615.5 million?

Allow me to illustrate the principle with some simple numbers. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume the salary cap is $200 million. Let’s further assume that the cap will increase by 10% every year (the principle works with any percentage, but it needs the cap to increase every year). Here’s what such a cap development would look like over a five-year period:

So now you have two teams sitting there in Year 1, one team says “Awe shucks, I can only spend $200 million,” the other team wonders “how can I spend more than the $200 million to field a more competitive team.” If you’re the Browns, you’re in the latter category, and you are going to “borrow” from Year 2 and Year 3 to increase your cash spend in Year 1. And you’ll do that by prorating part of your cash spend in Year 1 over Years 2 & 3.

In our example, the Browns would spend the $200 million cap space from Year 1, and add the cap increases from Year 2 ($20 million) and Year 3 ($42 million) as cash spend in Year 1 that they would prorate across Year 2 and Year 3.

That would give the Browns $262 million in cash spending in Year 1, while a team like the Cowboys would only have the $200 million cap number to spend.

So do the Browns have to pay the piper when Year 2 rolls around?

In Year 2, the Browns start out with “just” $200 million as they’ve already used up the $20 million cap space increase due in Year 2. So what they do is they simply borrow from Year 4: they add the $66 million from Year 4 to their Year 2 $200 million base and now have $266 million cash to spend in Year 2. The Cowboys meanwhile, still beholden to the salary cap, would have $220 million to spend.

Year 3 rolls around and what happens? The Browns have used up the cap increases from Year 3 and Year 4, but now simply add the cap increase from Year 5 to their Year 3 budget, giving them $293 million. The Cowboys in turn hit their ceiling at $242 million.

And this could go on in year 4 and 5 (and beyond) where the Browns simply add the cap increases from two years out to their cash spend.

Here’s what that would look like in table form.

The Cowboys, like every other team, push money into future years all the time. But most of the time, they do this to manage their salary cap, they do not do it as leverage to increase their cash spend.

Just how much the Browns approach differs from the Cowboys approach becomes abundantly clear when you take a look at each team’s cap commitments between 2024 and 2028…with data from OverTheCap.com.

For the years 2024 through 2028, the Browns have already accumulated $958 million in cap liabilities, the Cowboys have a little more than half of that with $585 million.

The NFL is intrinsically designed to be a parity-driven league; the draft, revenue sharing, the salary cap, compensatory draft picks, even the schedule; everything about the NFL is designed to even out the playing field as much as possible, and it’s very hard to gain any kind of competitive advantage.

One way of gaining a competitive advantage is by aggressively leveraging the salary cap to increase your cash spend versus your competitors. That does not mean that more money automatically leads to more wins, but if you are in it to win it, you’re going to try to spend as much money as you legally and reasonably can to field a winning team.

The Cowboys have spent less cash on their team over the last decade than almost any other NFL team. They are not in it to win it.

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NFL owners approve ban on swivel hip-drop tackling technique

NFL owners have approved a rule proposal to ban the swivel hip-drop tackle, the league announced Monday.

The violation will result in a 15-yard penalty if flagged in games, but Troy Vincent, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations, strongly implied last week that it is likely to be enforced similarly to the “use of helmet” rule, which typically leads to warning letters and fines in the week after a game rather than flags during play.

The hip-drop tackling ban proposal was written to address only a subset of the rugby tackling style that has spread around the NFL in recent years, competition committee chairman Rich McKay said last week.

The tackling technique often results in lower-body injuries. The rule requires officials to note two actions: If a defender “grabs the runner with both hands or wraps the runner with both arms” and also “unweights himself by swiveling and dropping his hips and/or lower body, landing on and trapping the runner’s leg(s) at or below the knee.”

On Monday, McKay clarified that Monday’s rule change doesn’t eliminate the hip-drop tackle — only the “swivel technique that doesn’t get used very often.”

“When it is used, it is incredibly injurious to the runner — the runner is purely defenseless. I’ve heard defenders say before and I hear them — ‘Hey, you’re putting me in a really tough spot, you’re saying I can’t hit here and what do I do?’ My response has as always been, ‘Well, you can’t do that.’ That’s just because the guy you’re hitting is defenseless, has no way to protect himself,” McKay said, according to NFL.com.

“So, we’ve got to protect him. You’ve got to come up with other ways and you know what, they do. Yes, we outlawed the hip-drop, but what you may think are the drag-from-behind where he falls on the — that’s still a tackle. This is only that tackle where the player is lifting themselves in the air and then falling on the legs.”

NFL executive vice president Jeff Miller said there were 230 instances of the tackling technique occurring during a game last season, with 15 players missing time as a result.

“It’s a new rule, so they’ll not have seen it,” McKay said about officiating the penalty. “This is never practiced; nobody does this in practice. There’s never a player that’s going to use this tactic on a player on his own team in a practice, so they’re never going to see it. They’re only going to see it in the game. We will tell them, ‘Listen, this is a penalty on the books. You can call it. You got to see all three elements of what’s going on here. You got to see him grab him. You got to see him control them. You got to see him swivel himself up in the air and you got to see him go unweighted. You don’t see it, don’t call it.’

“We’re going to take all these tapes that you’ve seen. … We’re going to take them all to the clubs and show them: This is what we don’t want. This is what a foul looks like.”

McKay said Monday that owners did not vote on the proposal to modify the kickoff; a vote could still take place Tuesday, however.

McKay said there’s urgency to vote on the complicated new kickoff rule this week because it could impact the way teams select players next month in the NFL draft.

Pro Football Talk

J.J. McCarthy’s odds to be second overall pick dramatically improve

DraftKings Sportsbook has moved McCarthy from +2500 to be the second pick to +500, following his Pro Day workout and building chatter that the Commanders will opt for the guy who won a national championship in January.

The Commanders could hold that selection, or they could trade it to someone else who possibly would take McCarthy.

Many believe LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels will be, or should be, the second overall pick. Chris Simms has Daniels as the clear No. 2 to USC’s Caleb Williams.

We’ll find out who goes where in round one exactly one month from tonight, when the draft gets started in Detroit.

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