The Arizona Cardinals are making smart roster moves

Roster Building 101

The first thing that one must understand about operating in a salary cap league, is that there is no realistic way to build a team with stars at every starting position, unless a majority of those players are signed at well below market rates. There is just no way to get the salaries to fit under the cap, while still filling out a 53-man roster.

This is one of the reasons that draft picks and rookie contracts have become so valuable to NFL clubs. For example, the Cardinals just signed star pass rusher Chandler Jones to a massive five-year, $82.5 million contract that will pay him an average of $16.5 million per season.

Now juxtapose Jones’ contract with that of his book-end pass rusher, Markus Golden. Golden’s rookie contract is a four-year deal, worth about $3.9 million, with an average annual salary of just under $1 million. While Jones is regarded as the better pure pass rusher, the difference in production is nowhere near the difference in salaries.

The point is that, in order to field the best roster possible, a team must find a balance between high-priced stars like Chandler Jones and Patrick Peterson, players on rookie contracts like Markus Golden and David Johnson, mid-tier free agents like Jermaine Gresham and Antoine Bethea, budget free agents like A.Q. Shipley and Jarvis Jones, and low-cost reserves like Kerwynn Williams and Alani Fua.

Scouting and the draft are really the key to maximizing this balance. A team that drafts well benefits both in terms of having a continual inflow of good players on team-friendly rookie contracts, and in that it supplies them with star players who are worth re-signing to large contracts. At the same time, the decisions regarding who to pay become even more difficult when a team drafts well.